


Way Down Hadestown

by ScarletPhoenix, Thette



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AUs in illusions, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - High School, Community: deancasbigbang, Don't eat fairy food, Fae & Fairies, Fairies are dicks, Illusions, It's the first rule of hunting, M/M, Orpheus myth retold, Other characters in illusions, Twelve tasks to save your beloved, angel!Cas AU, human!Cas AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletPhoenix/pseuds/ScarletPhoenix, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thette/pseuds/Thette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Dean should know better than to accept food from supernatural entities. Now Cas and Sam have to complete twelve tasks to rescue him from the fairies. Oberon, king of the fairies, is a dick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hey, Little Songbird

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [How (thanks to Gabriel) Dean and Castiel (accidentally) raised each other (and Sam).](https://archiveofourown.org/works/540915) by [Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera). 



> Written for the [DeanCas Big Bang 2013](http://deancasbigbang.livejournal.com). Check out [ScarletPhoenix' awesome art!](http://scarletphoenix1.livejournal.com/2164.html) Huge thanks to AWahlbom for the beta.
> 
> Title from Anaïs Mitchell's Hadestown (A Folk Opera). (It's a great album, with a very Supernatural feeling. Her Hades is totally Crowley. Of course, the album and the show share the same background in poverty and American Gothic.) 
> 
> Takes place in early S5, somewhere between The End 5x04 and Changing Channels 5x08. Canon divergent from there. Shamelessly stealing from by Clap Your Hands If You Believe... 6x09. Fairies inspired by Terry Pratchett. Sam and Cas rescuing Dean together slightly inspired by How (thanks to Gabriel) Dean and Castiel (accidentally) raised each other (and Sam) by Vera_DragonMuse. Since fairies are not bound by the laws of time in our universe, characters from later seasons feature in the illusion sequences. Basically, I wanted to write ALL THE AUs. 
> 
> Warnings: Sex, violence and offensive material on the same level as the show itself. One sexual (non-graphic) dubcon scene with Dean/OFC while Dean is under the influence of a spell and one (non-graphic) scene where a female witch attempts to sexually assault Dean. Homophobia. Winchester family dynamics including Sam and Dean's lack of appropriate boundaries while growing up, and John Winchester's parenting. Non-consensual use of mind-altering substances. Non-permanent major character death and dying. Mental illness and existential angst. Slight hints of blood/knife kink. Sam expresses canon-level disgust over Wincest.

EURYDICE  
Strange is the call of this strange man  
I want to fly down and feed at his hand  
I want a nice soft place to land  
I want to lie down forever  
HADES  
Hey, little songbird, you got something fine  
You'd shine like a diamond down in the mine  
And the choice is yours if you're willing to choose  
Seeing as you've got nothing to lose  
And I could use a canary

\--Hey, Little Songbird, from Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell

Really, it was all Dean's fault. He should have known better by now. It's practically Rule #1 of hunting: Never accept food from supernatural entities. Anyway, it had all started with a regular hunt.

"So, get this," Sam said, "there's been some pretty straight-forward fairy sightings in Chimney Rock, North Carolina. Dancing lights, crop circles, even some abductions."

"I'd have guessed UFOs," Dean replied without taking his eyes off the medical drama. Sam looked up at the TV, where a brunette in scrubs was making out with a bearded guy in an empty hospital cafeteria.

"UFOs? Seriously?"

"No, not seriously, dumbass. But you're guessing fairies?" Dean's face twisted in a disbelieving grimace.

"The town has been a known fairy sighting spot with reports going back to the late nineteenth century. I'm just taking the lore seriously."

"What does Bobby say?"

"Bobby considers fairies pretty well documented, but he's never seen one. He told me some hunter he knows called Garth has killed one, though." Sam shrugged, itching for a hunt. The whole Apocalypse Now business was really draining. He just wanted to go out and gank something ugly.

"Fair-y enough," Dean said with a smirk and a chuckle. Puns on that level weren't even worth acknowledging, it'd only encourage him. They started packing, and were on the road within minutes.

***

"Sam," Dean said with exasperation, "how the hell do we kill fairies, if these things are fairies? Because they are looking for an icing." It had taken them several hours to get into Chimney Rock. Road signs mysteriously moved, major roads suddenly becoming dirt paths, GPS malfunction, cows blocking the road. Dean had grown more and more annoyed, and he had taken it out on Sam.

"Iron should work, that's why they're generally not around in modern environments. Salt doesn't seem to have any effect, at least not if we shoot them. Lore goes both ways on silver. I'd say we go with iron." He looked up from the books. "Or we can, you know, Deal with them."

"Capital D-Deal?"

"Yeah. They have to follow their agreements, but they tend to be worse than demons when it comes to the fine print."

"Well, you're the lawyer in the family."

"Shut up, I never actually got into law school." Sam smiled. "No Dealing, I get it. Oh, and we can entice them with cream, honey and spices. And they like shiny things, especially gold and bronze. Pins and coins are traditionally used to summon them."

"Let's go, then, Sammy. Time to commit some hate crimes." Dean could really be offensive when he wanted to.

***

Mrs Warden, one of the farmers whose cows had been exsanguinated, invited them in for tea. "Oh, it was a terrible, terrible thing, indeed. One day, Betsy, that's what she was called, she was perfectly fine. The next, she went dry, and two days later, she was dead in the field, not a single drop of blood left in the carcass." Dean mumbled something around a mouthful of brownies. Sam smiled, pained, and asked her about other strange occurrences. "Well, three of my neighbors also had this happening, and there's the dead spot in the back wheat field, just around the big stone."

"What do you think happened?" Sam asked.

"Oh, I don't know," the chubby, white-haired farmer replied. "My grandmother would have blamed the fairies," she laughed.

Sam said a few comforting words and a polite goodbye. "Da-yum, those were good brownies," Dean mumbled. Mrs Warden laughed and tossed her hair as Sam ducked under her windchimes with bells and slices of horn.

"Fairies, probably, but a tilberi is also a possibility," Sam said as they walked to the car. Dean just shrugged, not even bothering to make his customary slam of witches. "Did you find any hex bags?"

"Huh?" Dean stared at him vacantly.

"Dude! Were those pot brownies?" Dean just rolled his eyes lazily. "Are you high?" That brought out a stream of giggles and something slurred about Cas.

When they got back to the motel room, Dean kicked his shoes off in the corner and fell down on the bed. "Duuude..." He grinned, and it was like watching him back in the good days, before he went to Hell. Something broke inside of Sam, and he collapsed on his own bed. He could barely keep the tears from forming in his eyes. "D'ya think they have Magic Fingers?" Dean asked.

"Don't you think you'd have noticed the box by now if they had?"

"Sam, Saaaaammy... You're so smart. My smart little baby bro..."

"Yeah, that's because I don't eat pot brownies. Jeesh, sleep it off, Dean. I hope you're clean by morning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tilberi, snakkur, troll cats or milk rabbits are creatures from Nordic folk lore. They are animals (often cats, rabbits or hares), created by witches (often through a crossroads deal with Satan) to steal milk and wool from living animals.


	2. The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania

Yesterday, I ate a pomegranate  
with my bare hands.  
One of the seeds  
had a perfect  
puncture  
wound, spitting red juice  
up my arm.

For a moment,  
I could understand  
the grace in monsters.

\--Benjamin Clime, Pomegranate I.

The next morning, Dean didn't wake up. Sam assumed that whatever the bitch had baked into those brownies had knocked Dean out good. He checked Dean's pulse and breathing, which were normal, so he twisted his brother into the recovery position and went to get breakfast.

When he came back, the room was empty. Dean's boots were still where he had left them, and the keys to the Impala were on the table. On Dean's bed, a bright purple foxglove lay atop of a bunch of lavender twigs, marigolds and pale yellow primroses. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. He picked up the phone and called Cas.

"Hello, Sam."

"Hey, Cas. Uhm... Dean's in trouble. I think it's fairies, or possibly witches."

Cas appeared right in front of him, still holding the phone to his ear. They lowered their phones, weirdly synchronized, and Sam pointed at the bed.

"Tell me everything you know," Cas said, seriously. Sam did, talking about their work and Dean's reaction to the pastry. Cas studied him with his intense blue gaze, letting him finish, and then asked some clarifying questions. "I see," he said at last. "We must enter the Faerie realm to bring Dean back, and it's important to hurry. Time moves differently there. I will need to cloak my remaining Grace as much as possible. The fairies must not know that I'm an angel."

"How will we get there?"

"We need to find the portal. The flowers are the key." Cas carefully put the marigolds, the lavender and the foxglove in a bowl and poured boiling water over them. He let the infusion seep while he collected the primroses in his pocket, and then he picked the flowers from the bowl and poured the brew into Dean's flask. He vanished, and came back with five old gold coins.

***

They found a standing stone in the back lot of Mrs Warden's farm. Cas scrutinized the stone, and put two of the coins in a shallow, round depression on the top. He gave one coin to Sam, telling him not to lose it, and put the remaining two in his own trouser pocket. He murmured a few words of what sounded like Enochian, and something about him became decidedly less angelic. Cas tipped the flask back and drank some of the flower infusion, gesturing for Sam to do the same thing. After that, Cas spread the remaining flowers on the stone, painted a circle around them with dew from the field and chanted in what sounded like Old English or possibly Old Norse.

A small, young woman dressed in white appeared, sitting on top of the stone. Her skin was a dark, earthy brown, and her features were sharp. She had dark eyes and curly, dark brown hair. "I guess you caught me." She rolled her eyes. "What do you want?"

"I just need you to take me to my brother. Please. We will let you go, I promise." Cas frowned at Sam, who shrugged. The angel couldn't really expect him to keep quiet when it came to Dean, could he?

She regarded him with cool eyes. "And what do I get if I do?"

"What do you want?" he asked.

She raised one eyebrow and considered the question. "Do you know, not many people ask me that." She smiled. "I like it. I want a kiss and the two coins you have left for me."

"Sam," Cas said in a warning tone.

"What will happen to me if I kiss you?"

"You will get kissed. And then I will open the door to Faerie. Can't promise your safe return, I'm afraid. You will have to bargain with the King for that."

"Fair enough. Safe passage for the both of us to wherever my brother is in Faerie, against a non-magical kiss, two gold coins and your freedom." She nodded. Sam stepped closer to her, and he could feel her lips against his own. They were chilly, like the dew. Deciding to give her value for the bargain, he held her head in both hands and opened his mouth. She responded eagerly, licking into him and threading her hands through the hair at the back of his neck. Her tongue was warm, in sharp contrast to her lips, and her teeth were sharp. He could hear Cas clearing his throat, and let go. The fairy smiled.

"If you need me again, feel free to call for Titania," she said with a wink. "Don't give my regards to the King." The ground behind her opened, and Sam could see a slope down into a narrow tunnel.

***

Cas and Sam walked slowly down the tunnel, trying hard not to look at the pictures on the wall. They were drawn in a dirty red-brown color that made Sam think of blood. The words of War echoed through his mind. "Blood, blood, blood." Sam shuddered. The pictures were stick figures hunting, fishing, feasting and engaging in sex, and crude drawings of fantasy animals. Sam recognized unicorns and griffins, along with extinct species like sabre-toothed tigers and mammoths. Runes of a kind he had never seen before were inscribed around the cave paintings.

"Ogham," Cas said, as if reading his mind. "Now look straight ahead and don't touch anything." They walked on in silence, and time seemed to come to a halt. Sam had no idea how far or for how long they had walked when they came to a cave mouth. "I know you want your brother back, but you need to stand back and let me handle this. I have some experience with fairies. No matter what, you can never tell them your name." He awkwardly clapped Sam on the shoulder, and they walked in, side by side.

"Welcome to my kingdom," said a naked and very hairy blond man with deer horns and cloven feet, who lounged on a throne of gold and bones. Sam hurriedly looked away from his enormous... equipment... "You can call me Oberon." Oh, fuck, and he had just made out with Titania. He'd be in deep shit if Oberon found out.

"But that's not your real name, is it?" Cas asked.

"Names have power," the fairy king said. "Who are you?"

"Someone who has come to retrieve a man from your clutches."

The fairy tilted his head, causing hundreds of tiny bells on his horns to toll in a cacophony of noise. "It is traditional, indeed, for the lover to bring his beloved back from the underworld. Tell me, Orpheus, do you love this man?"

Sam stared at Cas, not prepared to hear this. Love? It wasn't a word the Winchesters used. The last time he had said it, it was to Jess. And lovers? He did not want to know that about Dean and Cas.

Cas waited before he replied, obviously considering Oberon's words. "Yes, you can call me Orpheus. I do love him, through death and beyond. I've given everything for this man, and you know it."

Oberon smirked. "Your love for Dean Winchester, son of John Winchester and Mary Winchester, born Campbell, holds true, I can see it in your eyes." The detailed naming seemed like a ritual, a way for Oberon to establish the power of names. "He ate my food willingly."

"You're Mrs Warden," Sam interrupted. He should have seen that one coming, with the bells and horn of her wind chimes.

"That is another of my names," Oberon conceded. "Who are you? It's highly uncommon for Orpheus to bring another with him."

Sam stepped up before Cas got the chance to stop him. "It's may be unusual, but it has happened. He's family and I love him, just like Demeter loved Persephone."

"Very well, Demeter, I accept your presence, but you and Orpheus haven't given any reason for me to relinquish my claim on Dean." The fairy grinned, hard and toothy. "I just took the pretty boy before Titania could, and he's mine now! Dean!" he shouted, and two smaller fairies at the back of the throne room pulled thick leather curtains away.

"Yeah!" Dean shouted back from behind the curtains. He was lying naked on a bear skin rug, with two equally naked women, one of them on his lap with her back towards the room and the other feeding him cheeseburgers from a tray. "This had better be important, I'm busy." Cas gripped Sam's arm, hard.

"Do you want to leave?" Oberon asked, again tilting his head and making a horrible noise.

"Hell no, I never want to leave this place. Awesome, Metallica!" He started humping the woman on his lap in time with the tolling of the bells.

"As you can see, he wants to stay."

Cas glared at the fairy king. "Do you think he'd be eager to stay if he knew you were feeding him dirt and letting him lay down with huldrer? I can see their carved out, wooden backs and their foxtails."

"You have impressive sight. Twelve tasks is traditional for overcoming my magic. If you can win them all, I will let him go."

"If not?"

"Then you all stay. But Orpheus, Demeter, wouldn't it be a nice thing to stay here, to keep far away from the angels and demons laying claim to your beloved? You can all be together in my realm, lover and beloved, mother and daughter." God help him, Sam was tempted. No Lucifer or Michael? It'd be great. But as he watched Dean, knowing what Cas had said about the women and the food, he knew they had to try. He turned towards Cas, nodding.

"Twelve tasks," Cas said and nodded. The throne room around them disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't drink tea made from foxgloves; the plant contains chemicals that can change your heart rhythm. The huldra is a Nordic forest creature, who enchants men who work in the forest. She's beautiful from the front, but her back looks like a carved out tree stump and/or she has a fox tail.
> 
> There are a few poems attributed to Benjamin Clime that I've found posted online, but I can't find any biographical or bibliographical information about the supposed author. (I've tried searching for different spellings of his name.)


	3. Rumpelstiltskin

He spun till a ton was glistening  
Turned to me and gave me a smile  
He said I'm leaving now but I want what you owe me  
I'll be back in a little while

\--Split Myself In Two, by Meat Puppets

"What the hell?" Sam said.

"I don't know," Cas replied with rising levels of annoyance. They found themselves in a storeroom, filled with hay in loose heaps. On a table in the middle of the room were two spindles.

"Do you think we're supposed to spin the hay?"

Cas picked up a spindle and scrutinized it, his head tilted and his eyes squinting. Sam took a handful of hay and tried wrapping it around the spindle. "That is not likely to work," Cas commented.

"Well, do it better yourself, then."

Cas tried, he really did, using the few scraps of angelic power he had at his disposal, but all that happened was that he got straws all over his coat. His expression of dismay would have been funny, if it wasn't for the fact that they could lose Dean if they didn't make it. There was a silvery giggle from a dark corner.

"Who's there?" Sam shouted.

"You should see yourself," Titania said, walking up to them. She was wearing a green and golden full length dress, and she had a golden livery collar with a rose badge. "You're never going to spin hay into gold on your own."

"Oh," Cas said. "Yes, that is a traditional fairy task. One that is rarely completed without fairy help, at a dear price."

She smiled at Sam. "Indeed. Since you were so kind to me when I was in your power, and didn't ask for more than your brother's location, I'm going to help you. I'm not asking for anything in return."

"No tricks?" Sam asked.

"No tricks," she replied. "I can't resist a pretty boy with a kind heart, Demeter. This is going to be a quick job, but I need your help. Orpheus, you'll bring me the hay, and lay it down on my left side. Demeter, you'll take the gold thread from my right, and wrap it into hanks."

Everything happened in a blur after that. Every last straw in the room was spun into a fine gold thread. Titania even shook their clothes for the last straws, copping a feel at Sam's ass while she did it. When she was done, she kissed them gently on the foreheads, a quick blessing. Sam could see the golden mark from her lips on Cas' brow sparkle in the gloom. "I have to leave you now, but I wish you all luck in your endeavor." She disappeared, leaving the room conspicuously empty.

The air rippled, and Oberon's grinning face showed up before the rest of him, like a Chesire cat. He raised his eyebrows, looking at the hanks of golden thread. "I see." Sam stood up straighter, hoping to intimidate the smaller man. Cas did that thing with his shoulders that Sam always imagined as puffing up his wings. "Oh, you can relax. I don't mind that you had help. I just find it... interesting... to see the particular form of help you received." Sam held his tongue, afraid to even ask. "Well," Oberon said, "looks like you finished the first task."


	4. When You Send Me an Angel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains Dean/Lisa and major character death and dying.

Wise man said just raise your hand  
And reach out for the spell  
Find the door to the promised land  
Just believe in yourself

Hear this voice from deep inside  
It's the call of your heart  
Close your eyes and you will find  
The way out of the dark

\--Send Me an Angel, by Scorpions

Castiel was singing praises to the Lord, resonating in harmony with his brothers and sisters, when he heard the call. It was a confused but happy prayer, begging him to "get his ass over here, you goddamn holy son of a bitch, for old times sake." It was tempting to once again take physical form and enjoy the company of his old friend; the Righteous Man; the man who single-handedly defeated Lucifer before the Apocalypse could take place; the man he once put together from bones and dust. But it wasn't his place. Castiel chose not to manifest, keeping his presence in the tent a secret. A surprisingly well-dressed Bobby Singer stepped up to deliver a speech.

"Who'd have thought we'd ever be here?" The crowd laughed. "You all know Dean, I hear, but most of you don't know me. I'm Bobby, and I've stepped in as a father for Dean and Sam since John died, but I've been there for them since they were kids. And let me tell you, knowing Dean the way I do, I'd never have thought anyone would catch him. Good job, Lisa!" He lifted his glass in a small toast to the bride, and she beamed back. "We don't exactly talk a lot, the Winchesters and me. We weren't raised that way. We do things instead, and the things I've seen Dean do for love..." Castiel could hear the tears Bobby choked back. "You've won the lottery, Lis. There's not a more devoted husband in the world. I know Dean would die for you and Ben, the same way he would for me and Sam." He paused. "Love changes you. I was never the same after I met my wife, Karen, and I changed again the day she died." Castiel hummed in agreement, taking care not to let his true voice be heard. When he had seen first-hand the way humans loved, Dean in particular, he was changed, too. The abstract love for his Father's creations had become very concrete and personal. "So anyway, if there was a point to my ramblings, it's that I'm happy to welcome Lisa and Ben to the family. We're not exactly a conventional bunch, we're all dysfunctional one way or another, but damn, we take care of our own. To the bride and groom!" The guests raised their glasses in a toast, and everyone cheered.

"Hear that, Cas? We take care of our own." Dean's silent prayer echoed across Castiel's mind. "And you're one of us now, too. You should be here." Castiel couldn't reply, not here and now, but he kept watching through Lisa's family's speeches. They never mentioned death the way Bobby did, and he rejoiced in that, as it meant they had lived a much less painful life. He had watched as Sam broke out crying during his speech, and Dean called him Samantha, but accepted the offered hug.

Balthazar chose the moment when the Dean and Lisa danced their first dance as a married couple to buzz into a resonance node beside him. "What an ironically appropriate song."

The echoing notes of the steel-string guitar accompanied the tenor singing about wanting to be sent an angel in the land of the Morning Star. "I doubt it was Dean's choice of music."

"No, it would be such bad taste to have a song about your ex on your wedding." If Castiel had physical form, he'd tilt his head. He heard the gentle ribbing in Balthazar's tone, but couldn't quite understand the point of the joke. "My friend, Heaven waits for your song."

"Heaven does no such thing."

"No, not really," Balthazar conceded. "But we'll see you there anyway."

"But not yet," Castiel said. Balthazar sent gentle vibrations his way and disappeared. Castiel stayed for a short period of time, absorbing the company of the humans he had worked with, experiencing their joy with them. Then, he folded time and stepped out a few hours later and a short distance away.

***

Castiel watched the sleeping newlyweds, Dean's arms wrapped tightly around Lisa's slender form. Good things came to those who served Heaven. By accepting Michael while Sam resisted Lucifer, Dean had made sure the Apocalypse was averted. Castiel held his arms out and started chanting an ancient blessing in Enochian.

_"Micma samvelg nazpsad casarma abramg."_ Behold the Righteous Sword that I have prepared. Dean would have been the Righteous Man regardless of what Castiel did, but he took a lot of pride in how he had shaped his brother's Sword into a mighty and pure warrior. "May your house be guarded against evil. May your crops grow, and your livestock thrive." Castiel smiled. Not that Dean and Lisa were farmers, but the sentiment applied. "May your household prosper. May you and your children be fruitful." Family don't end with blood, a gruff voice in his mind reminded him. Yes, the blessing applied to Ben, too, whether he was Dean's biological son or not. Castiel resisted the temptation to read the bloodline and find out. It was of no matter now. "May you live long and happy lives. May the paths you walk be ever smooth."

Dean stirred, and his bright, green eyes caught the blue eyes of Castiel's vessel. "You creepin' and peepin' again, Cas?"

Castiel smiled slightly. "No, I'm blessing your marriage."

Dean's answering smile was halfway between happy and sad. "I don't want you here for an angel blessing. I wanted you there with us, celebrating. Apart from Sam, and he doesn't count, you're the best friend I've ever had. We had even set a plate for you. Burgers, you know."

"I'm a wavelength of celestial intent, Dean. I don't need physical nourishment." His voice softened. "But I was there. And I will hear your prayers. You served well, Dean. We will protect you and your family."

There was something broken and meek in Dean's eyes, something wrong. "Thanks, dude. You take care, too." This was goodbye, Castiel knew. He never understood the human need for farewells, but he indulged his friend.

"Goodbye, Dean," he said, laying one hand on the shoulder he had marked when he pulled Dean out of Hell. There was no need for him to be branded a champion of Heaven any longer. Castiel healed the scar, infusing just a tiny bit of his Grace into Dean's soul, and left for Heaven.

"You suck at goodbyes, you know that?" Dean's prayer was amused.

***

Over the years, Castiel heard Dean's prayers, even though he never showed himself again. Dean was not a praying man in general, and sometimes months went by without a word from him.

"Never thought I'd say this, but I miss you, dude. Saw a guy in a flasher's trench just like yours, and I almost followed him, until I saw he was blond. Would it hurt you to say hello to an old friend?"

"Cas, you're not going to believe this. I'm going to be a father. Me! Can you see me with a baby?"

"Holy hell, this pregnancy thing scares the shit out of me, Cas. I'm thinking about running away, start hunting again."

The very next day, Dean prayed again, apologetically. "Cas, you know I'd never leave her, right? I'm just freaked, man. You know, you should get your feathery ass down here, and we should grab a beer. For old times' sake. Talk a bit. Have a chick flick moment."

"Oh, yes, oh, God, oh, Cas! I'm a father! You should see her! The most beautiful little baby girl in the world! I'm a fucking father!" Castiel agreed. Mary was the most beautiful little baby girl he had ever seen. Until Samantha was born two years later, and then it was a tie.

"Hey, when you're done with your hallelujah thing, you should come see us at our new place. There's plenty of room, y'know, if you're bored of being a celestial whatever."

"Did you bless us with fertility? So not okay. She's pregnant again, and I don't know if I can support three children."

"Never mind, someone at my job likes me. They think I'm foreman material. Dude!"

"My darling daughter. I would call her Cassie, except that it's an ex. Can't name your kids after your ex. So, Cas, this is Samantha. Bamf your ass down and meet the kids. You'll love them."

"Bobby, Cas! He's dead!"

"I want to be just as happy about Samantha as I was about Mary, but I'm still crying over Bobby. Don't tell anyone, but I'm crying like a damn girl. That's Sam's job."

"I don't think I'll ever get used to not getting that grumpy 'What?' when I call him. I've saved his last message, just a little thing about protective amulets for the kids, and I can't stop playing it. Over and over. Damn, I miss him, like I miss you. Come on down, let's feel our feelings a little and talk about the paranoid old bastard."

"Good talk. Nay, great talk." He never before heard Dean sound so bitter. After that, Dean didn't pray for more than a year.

"Sam's in the hospital. Vampire. Please, Cas, please let him make it." Castiel had nothing to do with it, Sam managed to heal just fine on his own.

"Thanks for the help. You know how much Sam still means to me, after all this. Even though we've grown apart. We've become regular brothers now, and I think it's good for us. We shouldn't have to live in each other's back pockets all our lives."

"Saw the Supernatural books in the bargain bin today, and I couldn't help thinking about you and Chuck. Are you angels taking care of the prophet?"

"He'll be my third child. My precious child. I love them all so much, but I can see that Lisa is getting tired from being pregnant all the time. This needs to stop. I'm getting snipped and she's getting the bits taken out right after this kid is born."

"This is baby Bobby, Cas. Sam says I should call him John, but I don't wanna. Maybe, just maybe, I can agree to Bobby John. Sounds a bit Deliverance, though, but let's face it, I'm a hick. Why not? Bobby John it is."

"I don't think I ever thanked you, Cas. Thank you for letting me get through the non-pocalypse alive. Thank you for my wonderful family. Thanks for protecting us. I may be a bit drunk and nostalgic, but you know it's true. I couldn't have done this without you."

"I wouldn't mind if you beamed down, y'know."

Dean's last prayer was a wordless scream, that eventually became Sam's name.

***

"Castiel? Castiel, angel of the Lord, angel of Thursday, angel of my brother, can you hear me?" Sam never prayed to him. "Hey, Cas, I need to see you, and I'd rather not bring out the summoning and the holy oil, but if you don't show up, I will." The determination in his voice was fierce. Castiel stood in front of Sam's hospital bed, still invisible. For a man who hadn't yet turned forty, Sam looked ancient. His muscles had wasted away, his skin was dry and pale, and his luxurious hair had fallen out almost completely. Castiel looked away, focusing on the bouquet of primroses on the bedside table.

"Are you sure you don't want another morphine injection, sir?" the nurse asked. He looked familiar, with a boyish face under a mop of blond curls.

"No, thank you, nurse. I need to be alert. I'm trying to get in touch with a friend."

"Just let me know if you change your mind," the nurse said and left. Castiel materialized.

"There. Was that so hard?" Sam scowled at him, and then gestured at himself. "Who would have thought, huh? Cancer. Kidney cancer. I never thought I'd live long enough to die of something other than hunting."

Castiel shrugged. "You could have spent eternity as my brother's vessel."

"Yeah, great of you to bring that up." Sam sneered. "Look, I know I'm dying, and you know it, too. I'm sure you could heal me if you wanted to, but that's not why I wanted to talk to you. You have to know, somewhere, Cas, that this is wrong. This is not how it was supposed to be." Sam's desperate pleas echoed Castiel's own blasphemous suspicions.

"I know. But I don't know what went wrong or how to fix it."

"I think it goes way back. Apocalypse, or maybe even before that. Think, Cas. You always could see through the angel bullshit."

"But Dean, he's been happy." Why was it so important? No other servant of Heaven had ever mattered so much to Castiel.

"Yes. He's had his happy life with Lisa. The apple pie life. But you know, he's not going to be happy once I die, and I'm going to die very soon. I have a feeling that you should fix whatever's been changed in this world, and it's going to be too late without me."

"Humans," Castiel said warmly. "You place such a great importance on yourselves." But deep inside, he knew there was something to what Sam said. Both brothers needed to be here, now, and a decision had to be made. He stepped out of the ether before Dean, who was having dinner with his family.

Dean stood up and glared at Castiel. "So, now is a good time, huh? You couldn't have come sooner? I thought..." He stopped, unable to say another word.

"I never forgot, and I never left you. I watched over you, just like I promised."

"Yeah. Good job with Bobby and Sam."

"There's a natural order to things, Dean." There was so much pain in Dean's eyes. Castiel held out his hand in invitation. "But something is out of order, and I need your help to put it right." Dean nodded, and Castiel touched Dean's forehead with two of his fingertips.

"Sammy," Dean cried, and embraced his brother.

"Careful, or you're gonna break my bones. They're all stuffed with metastases, you know."

The nurse appeared in the doorway. "Visiting hours are over, sir."

"Please, just this once."

"I'll make an exception. Just this once, though." The nurse didn't leave.

"Cas," Dean pleaded, "Do something, heal him, this is wrong!"

"You know it is, Cas," Sam said.

"Yes," Castiel answered, "This is wrong, but I can't heal him. The fault goes even deeper. None of this was supposed to happen. This world is out of alignment."

"Good job, Orpheus," the nurse said. "You got there just in time. Didn't think you'd see through this one. But admit it, it was nice to be a full-blown angel again." He clapped his hands, and the hospital room dissolved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Enochian is cobbled together from the Claves Angelicae, probably with atrocious grammar.


	5. Team Free Lunch

EURYDICE  
Orpheus, my heart is yours  
Always was and will be  
It's my gut I can't ignore  
Orpheus, I'm hungry  
Oh, my heart, it aches to stay  
But the flesh will have its way  
Oh, the way is dark and long  
I'm already gone  
I'm gone

FATES  
Go ahead and lay the blame  
Talk of virtue, talk of sin  
Wouldn't you have done the same?  
In her shoes, in her skin  
You can have your principles  
When you've got a bellyful

\--Gone, I'm Gone, from Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell

"Hey, Mom!" Dean shouted as he opened the screen door. "We're home now!" He went straight to the kitchen, to make himself and Sammy some PBJs. He was so freaking hungry all the time, and Sam even more so. His baby brother had grown three inches since school had started, and despite all the junk food he ate, he still was all arms and legs with no meat on his bones. "Gotta get you properly fed, beanstalk." Sammy's long and thin face scrunched up in disapproval.

"Shut up. You're mean."

"I haven't even gotten started, bro." He loved giving Sam a hard time, but boy, if anyone else thought they could mess with him, he'd kick their asses so hard, third-and-final warning from the school or not. Mary came down the stairs, dressed in pajama pants and a ratty t-shirt, her long, blonde hair in a tangled ponytail. She kissed the tops of their heads as she went past, and ruffled Sam's girly hair.

"Rough night at the hospital?" Sam asked.

"You have no idea, sweetie. I hate drunk drivers, and I'm so glad I have you two."

"I'm so glad I have you" meant one of two things: either some kid had died in the ER, or she had met someone who reminded her of John. Dean sometimes laughed bitterly over the fact that his mother had chosen to become a nurse and go to work in the same hospital where his so-called father had met That Other Woman, who also was a nurse. This was the first year he wouldn't be ordered by the family court to spend four weeks in Minnesota with his dad, but he would go anyway. He couldn't leave Sam with Adam and Kate's resentment, or leave him to the fights he'd inevitably have with John. No, it would be just the two of them in the cramped guest bedroom they'd share, all alone against the world, just like it always was. They would be much better off here in Lawrence with Mom, even though they never had enough money, and Dean's own job at the diner was needed to pay the bills, especially since he didn't bring in child support anymore. The difference between having a husband (even if he was a cheating bastard) and not having one was that Kate could work the day shift, and Mom had to work nights. Sometimes, he hated his dad, but he could never sustain that hate for long. It mostly ebbed out into a tired disappointment.

"How was school?" Mary asked, over her own sandwich.

"So boring," Sam said. "I know this stuff already. I don't see why you can't let me skip a grade."

"We'll discuss that when you get your next report card," Mary said, firmly ending that particular discussion. "Dean?"

"Eh, not bad. Me and Charlie totally rocked the CS class, but the physics test sucked."

"You'll do just fine, I know you will. How's Charlie?"

"She'll be over tonight for some AD&D."

"Geek," Sam coughed. Dean glared at him.

"Shut up, or I'll kill your Dwarf Paladin."

"It'll be great to see Charlie again. It's been a while." Mary smiled her bright and happy smile. She had almost adopted Charlie as her own, and Dean was so happy for them both. Mary said she needed some female company, and Charlie needed a proper parental figure in her life. When her parents died and she moved to her aunt and uncle in Lawrence, six years ago, she was sort of drifting, until she caught the Winchesters. (Well, you could say it was Dean who caught her. Literally. By the lovely red braids. After which she scolded him about respecting personal boundaries and not touching without consent. She had been a very precocious twelve-year-old, but he had learned a valuable lesson, and adapted his techniques for picking up girls.)

"Yeah, she's prepping for the SATs. She's got her eye on Caltech. Barely even has time for me anymore," he pouted, exaggerating for Mary's amusement.

"Dean and Charlie, sitting in a tree..." Sam chanted.

"Watch it."

"Yeah, I don't see why she'd want someone who's as dumb as you are, anyway." Sam's mood shifted instantly. Dean remembered his own temper at fourteen, and that was the only thing keeping him from slapping the kid.

"Sam, your brother is not dumb," Mary scolded. "Dean, you know you could go to college, too, if you want."

"Meh." It wasn't that he didn't want to go to college, but Sam deserved it, the little annoying genius, and there was no way Mary could pay for the both of them with her LPN salary. "Maybe a community college later. I have no rush. Save the college fund for Sam." The college fund was a running joke. Currently, it was $137.50 in a jar, subject to emergency withdrawals. Luckily, the emergency withdrawals had been fewer since he got his job, not the least because he got to eat leftover diner food, and sometimes could take some home, too. Two growing teenagers could eat a lot, and it always made him feel ill at ease to eat the last of anything at home. Charlie never mooched. She knew what it was like, even though she never said anything. Her own family had been going through a rough patch after the death of her parents, when her uncle lost his job. Sam's preppy friends had no idea. Dean often wondered what they thought of Sam's hand-me-downs and second hand clothes.

"Dean, I want you to do the whites, and please do your homework. You're a bright kid, you just need to work a bit harder in school. Sam, if you're going to skip a grade, you need straight As. Even if schoolwork is boring. And it's Wednesday, give John a call. You know you have to."

"Yes, Mom," they said in chorus. She beamed at them, and started clearing the table.

"What did I do to deserve such well-behaved young men?"

***

"What up, bitches," Charlie greeted them at the school yard, hand held up in a Vulcan salute.

"What up, sis," Dean replied, high-fiving her the Vulcan way.

"You two couldn't get more geeky if you tried," Sam said, embarrassed. "Not even when you were doing ballet, Dean."

"Ballet was awesome. I can still kick your ass while  _en pointe_." Charlie giggled, and Dean smiled at his best friend. Little sister. Best friend-who-was-a-girl, because there was also Benny, who was his best friend in a completely different way.

"Whatever."

Charlie ruffled Sam's hair, and he hightailed it out of there.

"Admit it, you're only doing that because you want to get rid of him."

"Yeah. And he has lovely ruffleable hair."

Dean had never been one of the cool kids, but he was a geek and proud of it, and he had his geeky friends. And Benny of course, who was another outsider. The first day after Benny transferred from Louisiana, he and Dean had gotten into a fistfight. Although the older guy had him on raw strength, Dean was wiry, tough and agile. It had been epic, and they had been friends ever since. Friends who beat each other in a very loving and manly way (but not on school property, since that first warning of the year). Sam joked that Dean adopted friends like siblings, and in a way, it was true. Benny called him brother, and Charlie was his sis, and he'd never let them down. He was just glad they didn't need as much protection and caretaking as Sam did.

Dean spotted the new kid in his English class on a bench. He didn't have the protection that Dean's clique of friends provided. He was simply the odd kid from the religious family. Dude wore a trench coat, of all things, over a suit, but the formal wear didn't stop him from looking charmingly disheveled. Cute, actually. He had seemed geeky in class, so Dean went up to him, always looking for new recruits.

"Cas?" Dean asked. "Cas Novak?"

"Who's asking?" the kid wanted to know.

"Hiya, I'm Dean Winchester. Just came by to say hi, wondering if you're as much of a geek as I am." Cas raised his eyes, and stared at Dean. His eyes were a startling blue, and neither of them seemed to be able to stop staring. Dean cleared his throat and was the first one to look away. "So, yeah, if you're into geeky stuff, I can show you around. You know, if you want to. I mean, I'm a roleplayer and a Trekker, but if you like, you know, like," where the hell did all this nervous energy come from? "...like hacking or war games or something, I know the right people..." Dean looked back. Cas was still staring, unblinkingly.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

"Cas, have we met before you moved here?"

Cas looked away. "I don't think so." A breeze flapped at Cas' coat tails, and the fluttering sound reminded him of something, but he just couldn't remember what.

Dean shrugged. "Okay. You just look familiar. Anyway, see you later, if you feel like it. You'll like Charlie, because everybody likes Charlie."

"Yes, I will see you later," the strange student said, with a mere hint of a smile twitching at his lips.

"Meet me and Charlie and my dorky little brother here after school."

***

Dean took the three of them, Charlie, Cas and Sam, to the diner where he worked. He changed into his red and white server's shirt quickly, and took their orders. "Hey, Sam, if you do your homework now, you can watch Trek with us later." Sam just rolled his eyes in reply. "Where do you get your attitude from? You should be happy I take care of you."

"Yeah, right," Sam said. "As if anything matters." God, the kid could be broody when he was in one of his moods.

"I might be able to hang a bit with you later, it seems like a slow day. Hey, Cas, first burger is on the house." Cas watched him again, with his opal blue eyes. Dean just couldn't stop staring back.

"Dean, Cas?" Charlie tried to get their attention. The homeless man with greasy blond hair, who was sitting by the counter, asked for a refill, and Dean left his friends to their own devices. Charlie and Cas seemed to get along swimmingly, but then, nobody could resist the redhead's enthusiasm.

After his shift, Dean drove Cas home. As they came closer to the Novak family home, Cas started to fidget. "What's up, Cas?"

"My parents won't like that I've been out all night, and my stepmother can be very strict."

"Do you need moral support?" Cas looked embarrassed, which Dean took as a yes. He parked on the gravel driveway and followed his newest friend to the door. Before Cas had the opportunity to reach for the handle, the door opened from the inside and a slim, black woman in a pant suit stood silhouetted there, her arms crossed.

"And what do you call this?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am. Please, forgive me." Cas didn't look at her.

"Where have you been?" She focused on Dean. "And who have you been with?" He flinched under her cool stare.

"I'm sorry. I should have called."

"Darn right, you should have. Get in, both of you." Great, now Dean was a part of the family drama. She pushed them into the living room, where a bearded man in his late forties sat on an armchair that looked like a throne. One dark-haired and two blond young men, a little older than Dean and Cas, sat on one of the couches, and two black men of about the same age sat on the other with a young, dark-haired boy. "Well, boy," the woman said, "won't you introduce us to your friend?"

Cas blushed, and Dean tried to make himself invisible. "This is Dean, a new friend from school. Dean, this is my father Chuck, my stepmother Raphaela, my brothers Gabriel, Balthazar, Michael and Samandriel, and my step-brothers Uriel and Joshua."

"Hi," Dean said with a little wave and a grin. "You've... Got a big family."

"We've been blessed by the Lord," Chuck said solemnly.

"So, I should go, nice meeting you all, bye," Dean blurted out, leaving Cas to his fate. Goddamn, that Raphaela chick was creepy when she stared at him like she was trying to grill him with her eye lasers, Cyclops style.

***

"So-o," Charlie sing-songed the next day, "Dean has got a boy crush."

"Shut up."

"I notice you're not even asking who I'm talking about." Dean frowned, and she laughed. "You know I'm always here for you, right? You can talk to me."

Dean thought about her offer. Charlie was aggressively out of the closet, and nobody even bothered teasing her about being a lesbian. But lesbians and bi women were hot, according to popular culture. Gay men far less so, and nobody even understood bisexual men. Dean was a member of the school's Gay Straight Alliance club (founded by Charlie), but he had never made a big deal out of his occasional crushes on guys. Let's face it, no matter what he did, it'd always be easier to just go with the flow and make out with another girl out of the large pool of pretty faces lining up to date him. Charlie cocked her head at him. "His family is so religious, anyway. He'd just call me an abomination and leave." And what would happen to their newly founded friendship if he did?

"I can't believe you don't know this, but Dean, strict religious families are, like, a breeding ground for homosexuality. And you know what they say about younger brothers?" How did she even know about Cas' older brothers? Best not to ask.

"Just because Cas has so many older brothers I can't keep them straight, pun definitely intended, doesn't mean he's gay."

"Just you wait and see, Dean. He can't keep his eyes off you."

***

Dean's little gang of geeks (and Sam) were gathered in the Winchester's living room, and Star Trekkin' was playing on the stereo. They were all singing along: Dean as Kirk ("you're always Kirk," Sam complained), Charlie as Uhura, Sam as Scotty, Benny as Bones, and Cas as Spock.

"We come in peace, shoot to kill." The Kirk lyrics spoke to him on a fundamental level. While he didn't mind trying to resolve a conflict peacefully, it always felt better to do so with the threat of violence as backup.

"There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape them off, Jim," Charlie sang in an exaggeratedly feminine voice. Her opinion of Uhura was decidedly ambivalent. He knew she loved that a black woman had a role as a high ranking officer in a TV show from the sixties, but at the same time, she felt that the character didn't live up to her full potential.

"I cannae break the laws of physics, laws of physics, Jim," Sam belted out at the top of his lungs. No, he couldn't, but sometimes he wanted to. Sam was the uncertainty principle personified. It was hard to get a grip on him, finding out what he wanted and where he wanted to be. Right now, Dean could see that Sam loved being here with them, and that he didn't want anything to do with them at the same time. Dean shone a bright Winchester (TM) smile at his baby bro, and got a shy smile back from under his bangs.

"It's worse than that, it's dead, Jim," Benny sang in a deep bass voice. Benny was a perfect Bones, always trying to convince Dean to go with his gut and trust his feelings (in a manly way, of course). Dean always felt safe when he was flanked by Benny and Cas, his trusted friends, who'd urge him to make snap decisions and overthink things, respectively.

And Cas. Cas was truly a special case. "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it," his gravelly baritone rang out. There was something alien about Cas, something that made him fit the role of the Vulcan perfectly. To be honest, Dean felt that they had something between them, and even though he wasn't a shipper (shut up, mental Charlie, that was one fic, and it was Copperbadge), he could see the chemistry between Kirk and Spock. They just fit.

Together, they were the perfect Star Trek crew. "Star Trekkin across the universe, on the starship Enterprise under Captain Kirk. Star Trekkin across the universe, only going forward 'cause we can't find reverse." They all screamed the finishing chorus and fell of the couch in a fit of giggles. Yeah, Dean thought, his life could be a lot worse.

***

Dean woke up screaming. He'd dreamt about a monster, who looked like a girl, but had black pits for eyes and a circular mouth with teeth growing in from the sides when you saw her face in a mirror. His heart was beating rapidly and his t-shirt was drenched in sweat. He got up, checked that he hadn't woken Sammy, and went downstairs to get a cup of warm milk. Damn, that was one hell of a scary dream.

Mary sat by the kitchen table, sipping herbal tea and writing a shopping list. "Why are you up now, Mom?"

"I worked yesterday night, and I'll work tomorrow night, so I just have this shift off. No reason to reset my diurnal rhythm for just one day. A better question is why you are up."

"I had a nightmare."

"Monsters again?" He had been having these nightmares for a long time, but they seemed to get worse. He nodded with a shrug, and accepted Mary's offered cup of herbal tea. "There is something you might need to know, Dean." She looked away, as if whatever she was about to tell him was so awful it broke her heart. Money, John, work, school, all the things it could be flashed before him. She took a deep breath and met his eyes. "I come from a family of monster hunters, Dean."

"No way."

"Yes way," she said with a smile at the attempted slang. "Your grandfather was the best demon hunter in Kansas, and your grandmother could salt and burn a corpse like no one else I have ever met. I myself wasn't entirely useless as a hunter." Dean made a sound of disbelief. "But I got out. I wanted a normal family, a normal life, and that's why I eloped with John. I really don't understand why you're having these nightmares, but I think I'll get in touch with one of my cousins and have him take a look at you. That OK?" Dean nodded, stunned. "Good. Now, go back up and catch a few more hours of sleep." She kissed his forehead. "Angels are watching over you, sweetie."

***

The nightmares became worse and worse as the months passed. He got short-tempered by the lack of sleep, and even Benny commented on it. The situation with Cas got "stare-ier and stare-ier," as Sam said, but neither of the boys made any moves.

One day at lunch, they all sat basking in the late May sun, just drinking the last of their juice and making the boxes last as long as possible. There were marigold flowers in pots by the benches, wilting slightly from the lack of watering. Everything would be perfect, if it wasn't for the fact that Dean would graduate high school in a week, and he and Sam would be forced to leave Lawrence for four weeks. Dean didn't know if it was the constant lack of sleep, the upcoming visit to John and his new family, the regular fights with Sam, or the money problems, but something within him itched for a fight. So when Cas said something about God, Dean lashed out. He'd always been an atheist, but he'd never before felt the need to be in someone's face about it. "If you didn't share your delusions with a majority of this country, you'd be on antipsychotic meds now."

Cas didn't reply. He simply left the table, walking away without looking back. Dean felt Benny's slap on the back of his head. "Go apologize, you idiot."

"Why?"

"Because you were a dick to one of your best friends," Charlie said.

"Don't wanna." God (heh), he sounded like such a child, even to his own ears.

"Dude," Sam said. "When I think you're being childish, it's bad. Even though you're busy with your big, gay freakout, it doesn't mean you should let Cas suffer." Dean stared at Sam in a panic. "Yes, I know. I'm the smart one, remember?"

"Go get him, tiger," Benny said.

Dean found Cas leaning on the fence by the gates. "Thinking about skipping class?" Cas turned around to face him, but didn't speak. "Wanna skip together?"

"No, Dean, I don't want to be anywhere near you."

"Look, Cas, I'm sorry. I can be such an asshole sometimes."

"Yes." He had expected Cas to argue the point. When he didn't, Dean didn't know how to continue. After what felt like an eternity of silence, Cas started talking. "I know you like it here. You have your family and your friends, and they all love you. I've never felt connected to anyone. I'm a stranger in my own home. I feel like I'm not even human, sometimes."

"Welcome to high school." Cas snorted at his feeble joke. "We all feel like outsiders. That's what we have in common."

"No, Dean. You don't get it. I feel like there's something deeply wrong with everything."

"There you are. Nobody's killed anybody yet, I see. Good." Count on Sam to interrupt when they were starting to get somewhere.

"Sam," they said in unison.

"I didn't hear anything, I swear. Other than that Cas feels alienated. You're not alone," he said, leaning his head on Cas' shoulder in support. Cas patted Sam's hair, and Dean was jealous of them both.

"What, you, too?"

"Yes, Dean! Nothing's right. I keep getting flashbacks to another life, where it's just you and me. Mom's dead, and so's Dad, and we're older. And I'm taller than you." Sam was describing the setting for the monster dreams.

"I thought you were taller, smarter and stronger than me in my dreams because I have low self esteem." Sam and Cas smiled at each other.

The homeless man, who used to hang out at the diner, came up to them, and spoke directly to Dean. "No, this is not what you're used to, but I know you like it here. You can stay. You'll have your family, you'll have your friends, and you'll never have to see a monster ever again."

Dean was tempted, he really was. From what he had seen of the other (real?) world, it wasn't a happy place. "What about the people we sometimes save?"

"Never mind them," the blond man said.

Dean knew exactly what that meant. Stay here, and everybody he would have saved will die. "Not worth it," he gritted out between clenched teeth.

"So be it," said Oberon. He clapped his hands, and the school yard disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Copperbadge](http://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge) is probably the single best fanfic writer I've ever read, and something as uncommon as a straight male slash writer. As far as I know, he hasn't written Kirk/Spock (or any Star Trek at all), but this chapter takes place in a slightly different reality.


	6. Rainbows and Silver Moonbeams

HERMES  
River Styx is high and wide  
Cinderbricks and razorwire  
Walls of iron and concrete  
Hound dogs howling round the gate  
Them dogs'll lie down and play dead  
If you got the bones, if you got the bread  
But if all you got is your own two legs  
You best be glad you got em

ORPHEUS  
Wait for me, I'm coming  
Wait, I'm coming with you  
Wait for me, I'm coming too  
I'm coming to

HERMES  
You're on the lam, you're on the run  
Don't give your name, you don't have one  
And don't look no one in the eye  
That town will try to suck you dry

\--Wait for Me, from Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell

Oberon guided Sam and Cas out of the store room and into a clearing. "One of my proudest stallions has escaped. You need to catch him and ride him to my castle." Oberon pointed at a stereotypical fairy tale castle up in the clouds, and vanished.

"How the hell are we going to know which damn horse is his stallion?!" Sam swore.

"I think we'll know," Cas replied, dryly. He started walking ahead into the dense forest before them, Sam following close behind. The skeins of gold were heavy in his pocket.

"I'm wondering," Sam said after a long walk in silence, "was anything of that real? It sure felt real." He remembered how weak he had felt when his body was permeated with metastases, and shuddered.

"I don't know," Cas said, obviously discomfited. "The rules of Faerie are not the rules of Heaven or Earth, or Hell, for that matter. I think we lived an illusion, brought on by my own and Dean's wishes, but I can't be certain."

"You told me not to let Oberon know our names, and we didn't, but we were still ourselves with our real names in the alternate realities."

Cas pondered the implications. "Oberon does not have the power of our names, the way he has the power of Dean's. He can't use them against us, because we haven't given them willingly. He probably knows our names, because he's been in our minds to create the illusions. We must still be very careful not to give anything away, even if he follows the letter of the law."

"So, it was us, it happened, but it didn't happen?"

"Yes, you can say that," Cas said with a tiny, wry smile.

"Then, I'm sorry for being a dick to the angel you."

"You had your reasons. I had, after all, left you for more than ten years."

"Dude, just accept the apology."

"Of course. May I also say that the teenage you were whining more than most human adolescents?" Sam laughed, and clapped Cas on the back. Cas tensed up under his hands.

"Sorry."

"No, listen!" There was a low rumbling from far away. "Hooves."

"That sounds like a big horse. And it's coming our way." They hid behind a thicket, and waited. The hoofbeat came closer and closer, and before long, a huge, silvery white unicorn ran past them. "Want to bet that's the stallion we're hunting?" As if the creature had heard them, it came running back and started racing towards them, horn pointing straight at Sam's heart. They ran, weaving between trees to give them a bit of advantage over the murderous equine.

"We may need to find a maiden," Cas panted.

"Yeah, you can count me out."

He could see Cas take a deep breath and sit down with his legs crossed. "Do you think it'll work for men?" Apparently, unicorns didn't practice gender discrimination, because the beast slowed down, and gently laid his head in Cas' lap.

Sam approached them cautiously. "So," he said quietly, "I'm guessing you haven't done the deed with Dean."

"No, we're not lovers. Oberon doesn't understand the nuances of human love. My love for your brother is pure and self-sacrificing." That'd explain a thing or two. But when he thought about the two of them, and how often they stood close to each other for no reason at all, he suspected there was more to it than just plain agape. This was neither the time nor the place to goad Cas about a possible crush, though. Cas smiled. "I'm glad I rejected the advances of the women at the whorehouse."

"WHAT?!" The unicorn turned restless, but Cas calmed him with a gentle hand combing through the mane.

"Shh... Your brother insisted I would not die a virgin on his watch, and he took me to a den of iniquity." Cas looked up. "I can read minds, both surface thoughts and hidden feelings. I was not comfortable knowing what had happened to the women there. I would never have gone through with any sexual activity under those circumstances." What on Earth had possessed Dean to think that was a good idea? Someone clearly needed to smack him, hard, and it'd fall on Sam, as usual. "Let's see if we can ride this magnificent animal."

Sam got up on the unicorn's back, and Cas slowly stood up. The animal licked at Cas' forehead, where Titania had kissed him, and let him sit up behind Sam. Cas held on to his waist, clearly uncomfortable with riding, and they started towards the castle at a slow trot. The forest was changing around them, the only constant being the narrow path they used. One minute, they were in a rain forest and the next, they were on the tundra. Sam actually enjoyed the ride. It felt meditative, and he entered a trance-like state that wasn't broken until they came up to the gates of the castle.

Oberon welcomed them with a huge grin. "Moonbeam!" he greeted the unicorn and patted its sides. Really? Moonbeam? Sam and Cas got off, leaving the shining silver animal in Oberon's care. Believe it or not, it actually looked like he cared for the unicorn. Sam watched the fairy king, trying to incorporate this information with what they already knew. "Thank you," Oberon said, still smiling. "I have prepared refreshments for you, if you want. The journey must have been long and tiring." Cas and Sam just looked at him with expressions of disbelief. "Never mind, then," Oberon continued. "Onto the next task."


	7. Riot Grrrl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains Sam/Amelia.

PERSEPHONE  
Brother, I know how you feel  
I can see you're blinded by the sadness of it all  
But look a little closer, everything will be revealed  
Look a little closer, there's a crack in the wall  
You want stars? I got a skyful  
Put a quarter in the slot, you'll get an eyeful  
You want the moon? I got her too  
She's right here waiting in my pay-per-view  
Oh, how long's it been?  
A little moonshine ain't no sin  
One at a time, boys, straight line  
What the boss don't know, the boss won't mind

\--Our Lady of the Underground, from Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell

Sam woke up to the golden morning light. He turned over and buried his nose in the pillow, smelling lavender, from the bags in the linen closet, and dog.

"Morning, sweetie. You got to sleep in today. I took Riot for a walk without you." The woman patted his butt under the sheets. Amelia, it came to him, her name was Amelia.

"Morning, Amelia," he said, or tried to say, it was really more of a mumble. Sam felt like settling in and never letting go, never waking up, just being here in his own soft bed that smelled of home. Amelia crawled into bed with him, still dressed.

"If you insist on not getting up, I'm going to have to demand that you earn your keep in other ways." Her hands roamed across his sides, over his ass, down the back of his legs. Sam groaned, still not properly awake, and turned over.

"You only want me for my body."

"Yeah, I've got taste. It's a very fine body."

A sudden sense of unease came over Sam, but he couldn't quite place what it was. "I don't know," he said, "it feels like I've forgotten something. Something important."

"Making me breakfast in bed?"

"You wish." He pulled her down for a kiss and tangled his hands in her gorgeous curls. She tasted of coffee and milk, and smelled like the flowery shower cream she always used. She smelled like home, too. Sam couldn't stop himself from smiling, even if it meant breaking the kiss.

  
***

Later, when they had had a slow Saturday breakfast of coffee, pancakes, bacon and fruit salad, while Riot ran around their feet begging for scraps, Sam was able to articulate what felt wrong.

"I miss my brother," he said.

"Then why don't you call him?" Strange. He had thought Dean was gone... somehow. (Don't say dead, don't say dead, a voice chanted in his head, sounding very much like his own voice as a child.)

"Yeah, I should do that." He picked up his phone, went out on the porch and browsed the contacts. Dean's name was in there, in plain text. He dialed, and Dean picked up after three signals.

"Hey, Sam, there had better be a reason you're calling this early."

"Early? It's ten in the morning."

"Exactly, and I just got home. You should have seen her, Sammy. So hot and athletic, and the things she wanted me to do..."

"TMI, Dean!" Talking to Dean was familiar and strange at the same time.

"So, yeah, any reason you're calling?"

"Nah, just missing you, I guess."

"You wanna get your hair braided and talk about boys?"

"Jerk. Can't I just want to spend time with my own brother? Do you want to have dinner with us?" Somehow, if he only got to see Dean, everything would be all right.

"You're kidding, right? Do you want me to drive all the way to Texas for dinner?"

Oh. They weren't even living in the same state. Why? Sam was flooded with memories. Of growing up together in seedy motel rooms; of being violent in perfect sync; of a love they rarely spoke of, but it was the most important thing in their lives; of arguments and betrayals and personality clashes. "Remind me again why we moved away?"

"Are you drunk, Sam?" Sam pursed his lips in disapproval, and Dean must have heard it. "Dude, you were the one who wanted to stop hunting and move in with Amelia. I'm just doing the job you wanted to get out of."

The resentment in Dean's voice was thick. "Dean," Sam interrupted, "we need to talk."

"We are talking." Sam rolled his eyes. He saw his neighbor, Mr Alfred, mowing the lawn, and waved at him. Mr Alfred waved back with a grin.

"I need to see you. When can you get here?"

"Let's see," Dean said, suddenly serious. "If I take the interstate, I can be there tomorrow morning. That OK?"

Sam shrugged. "Sure." They hung up after a few polite phrases. He rested his head in his hands, trying to think about his life and what he had done. The hunting life came back. Wendigos, rougarous, spirits, demons, Lucifer, Leviathans. That had been when he got out, after losing Bobby and watching both Dean and Cas almost die. Cas? What had happened to Cas? Would he hear if Sam prayed to him? "Castiel, angel of the Lord, can you hear me? Please come here, because something is seriously wrong." No reply. He didn't know why he wasn't surprised.

After a while, he looked through the contacts on his phone again. Yup, Cas before Dean, he should have seen that before. He called, but Cas didn't answer. A female recorded voice told him he had reached the voicemail of "I don't understand. Why do you want me to say my name?" Sam smiled and decided to try texting.

_Hi, Cas, we should talk. Something's up._

No more than a minute later, he got a reply.

_im coming with dean do you need me before tomorrow_

_No, tomorrow is OK._

So, Dean and Cas were together, doing whatever it was they did when Dean didn't pick up athletic chicks for one night stands? Interesting. He felt a pair of slim arms around his waist and soft breasts pressing against his back. "Are you done?" Amelia asked.

"Yeah," he said and turned around to embrace her. "Dean's coming tomorrow, and he'll bring Cas." He could feel her stiffening in his arms.

"Why?" There was something accusing and hard in the tone of her voice.

"Look, Amelia," he tried to placate her. "Something's wrong, and I need to talk to Dean about it."

Her annoyingly cute nose scrunched up with disapproval. "Why do you have to drag him back? Don't you think we're happy here?"

Wave after wave of pleasant memories flooded him. Birthday picnics, long walks with Riot, playing fetch in the park, confessions in bed, meeting her dad for the first time, drinking beer on the porch as the sun set... "I'm happy, Amelia. I'm very happy." He pushed her up on the counter and stepped in close to smell her hair.

Their lovemaking that night had been slow, but there was something desperate in Amelia's touch, as if she was afraid she'd lose him. Afterwards, she fell asleep with her head on his chest, and he slowly dozed off.

Dean bled out on the floor, ripped to shreds by hell hounds. Cas tried to stop the pulsating bleeding, but all it got him were bloodied hands. He looked up at Sam, panicked, but Sam was unable to move. Cas stalked towards him, anger burning in his eyes, shouting. "This is all your fault, Sam! You might as well have killed him yourself!" He still had some angelic strength, which he used to wrap his hands around Sam's throat and strangle him.

Sam woke with a choked scream. He could hear his neighbor's bone and brass wind chimes in the distance, and he could still feel Cas' hands around his throat.

  
***

  
Dean and Cas arrived on Sunday morning, and Sam welcomed them with a big hug, glad they both were alive. Cas mostly just stood there, letting himself be hugged, and turned his attention to Riot when Sam released him. Dean, on the other hand, clung tight and didn't let go. It was a wonderful feeling. Everything became less frustrating and vague when he could feel his brother's heartbeat against his own. "Need... Air..." Sam said, eventually.

"Sissy," Dean replied and smacked the back of his head. "What was the big deal? Why drag us back here?"

"Dean, there's something wrong. I have no idea what."

"I can tell you what's wrong. You," he poked Sam's abdomen with an accusing finger, "left. You didn't want to stay with your family. You got a house in the suburb, a dog and a vet for a girlfriend. That's what's wrong. And now you want back in?"

"I didn't say that." Dean's entire face shut down, leaving him out again. "Look, you're my brother, and I love you. Always have, always will. But I didn't call you here because I miss the diners and the motels, and almost getting killed all the time. I miss you, it's true, but I can't stop feeling like I shouldn't be here." Dean looked up again, hopeful. "And I don't mean it like 'Let's hit the road right now,' I mean it like 'There's something wrong in the fabric of reality, we're in the wrong timeline.'"

"Calm down, Moorcock." Sam stared at Dean. "What? I read. So, what makes you think this is a timeline switch?"

"Well, for one thing, when I woke up yesterday, I barely knew who I was, I had forgotten you were even alive, and I could barely remember Amelia."

"Where is she, by the way?"

"Out back, getting the grill going. Why do I get the feeling you two don't like each other?"

Cas gave him a wry grin. "She 'stole his little brother,' of course he despises her."

Sam chuckled, and showed his brother and the former angel the way to the back yard. There was something about the way Cas held himself that told Sam there was not a trace of angel left in him.

  
***

  
Dean and Amelia stared at each other, puffing their chests out and looking generally ridiculous. Their fight had been silent and unmoving so far, but Sam could sense it was about to come to blows pretty soon. "Hey," he said, trying to deflect. (He was mildly amused that he was the one diverting a family fight instead of Dean.) "How about those ribs, Amelia?"

Dean scoffed. "You don't do burgers, because mine are so much better than yours."

"Yeah? And whose cooking did Sam choose?"

Cas also tried to intervene, getting up close and personal with Dean. Unlike Sam's efforts, Cas' were successful. The hand on Dean's shoulder calmed him down, and he backed away from Amelia.

They ate, and exchanged empty small talk. Apparently, the summer had been dry in Kansas, where Dean and Cas had set up a home base. ("Smack bang in the middle of things, Sammy!") Sam could see Cas looking at Dean with something odd in his eyes. Was it? Could it be longing? The more he saw of them, the more he understood that the fallen angel had fallen for his brother, both literally and metaphorically. He tried to get them to talk about it, but Dean didn't understand, or pretended not to understand, and Cas was his usual laconic self. Damn, if Dean was out picking up random chicks, and Cas was pining over him, it could end really badly. Unless, of course, Dean just made up his conquests, which wouldn't be the first time. Damn, why was his family made up of emotional idiots?

The possibility of a gay interspecies relationship between Dean and Cas wasn't what bothered him, though. The feeling of wrongness hadn't abated. He looked at Amelia, and tried to feel happy again, but something was missing. Not even her tiny calloused hand in his made anything better. Mr Alfred approached, and greeted Sam and Amelia with firm handshakes. Something rattled into place in Sam's brain when he saw the blond man. "Oberon," he said, trying to keep calm.

"The very same. Don't you like this? I've made it from your hopes and dreams."

Sam could feel the tears welling up in his eyes. "Of course I like it, you bastard."

"You can have it all, you know."

"No, I can't. Not for real." He could feel his heart breaking. "This isn't real. You have to let us go."

"As you wish," Oberon said and clapped his hands. With a tearing sound, Amelia disappeared in front of them, before the rest of the garden dissolved.


	8. Shot to the Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains a non-graphic scene where a female witch attempts to sexually assault Dean, and major characters in the process of dying. Also contains a hint of blood/knife kink, non-graphic.

An angel's smile is what you sell  
You promise me heaven, then put me through Hell  
Chains of love got a hold on me  
When passion's a prison, you can't break free

Oh, you're a loaded gun, yeah  
Oh, there's nowhere to run  
No one can save me  
The damage is done

\--You Give Love a Bad Name, by Bon Jovi

"Up and at 'em, Cas," Dean said, removing the blanket from Cas' sleeping form. "We've got some bitches to catch." Cas groaned. Who'd have thought the former angel would be such a late riser? "Werewolves, dude! Shot to the heart," Dean began to sing.

He was still humming You Give Love a Bad Name as he drove Sam and the grumpy Cas to the closest greasy spoon. "Dean, I would prefer it if you didn't sing," Cas said.

"What? I'm not good enough for the angel choir?" He could tell that his quip had hurt Cas.

"I'm no angel," was the reply, Cas' expression even more stony than usual.

"Yeah, well, you'll always be my angel," Dean said with a grin. Cas just stared out the window at the rolling fields of Nebraska passing by.

  
***

  
The damned werewolf almost got him. She straddled him, claws tearing through the sides of his shirt and mouth with far too many incisors snarling at his throat. Shit, shit, shit. He fought the flashbacks to his death at the claws of a hell hound, but the memories almost overwhelmed him. Suddenly, a silver knife pierced her chest from the back, and she slumped down on top of him. He could feel the point of the knife poking at his skin. "Little help?" Cas kicked her off him, and crouched down to help him up. "It's fine. I'm not a kid."

"Take your shirt off."

"Wow, Cas, I knew you wanted my hot body, but here? Sam can see us."

"Sam will not see anything that will scar his brain for life. Sam will be in the car," Sam said, referring to himself in the third person as he left the warehouse.

"I need to see if your skin is broken. That knife was covered in werewolf blood," Cas said as he pulled Dean's shirt up. He dragged his hands all over Dean's torso, finding only superficial claw wounds. Dean closed his eyes and allowed himself to enjoy the treatment. What? It had been a while. His nipples hardened under Cas' hands. Before Dean had the time to properly appreciate that, Cas stepped back. Dean opened his eyes and caught Cas' gaze. The dark blue of his irises was barely visible around his blown pupils. They kept staring at each other, their rapid breaths in sync. Cas was the one who finally looked away.

Dean stalked off. He could usually live with Sam's teasing, but this time, he knew it was a very sensitive subject. For Cas, of course. "You," he pointed at his brother, "you shut the hell up." Sam merely held his arms up in a defensive "who? me?" gesture. The trio drove back to the motel in silence.

  
***

  
The next hunt, it was a shapeshifter. The slimy bastard had taken over the life of a housewife, tending her garden in the day and slicing throats by night. They watched her from the Impala as she weeded the foxglove beddings. "How do we kill her?" Sam asked. "We can't do it out in the open, unless we want to try the fugitive life again."

"Been there, done that, got the orange jumpsuit."

They decided to stalk her and grab her when she was hunting her next victim. As usual, they got separated during the hunt, and when Dean approached Cas again, covered in shifter blood, Cas didn't believe it was him. Dean tried to argue his case, but Cas just twisted his arm behind his back, pressed him up against the wall, and cut him shallowly with the silver knife. For a nerdy dude in a trench coat, Cas could sure pack a punch. Cas released his arm, and they just stood there, pressed against each other. Dammit, being cut and manhandled shouldn't be sexy, but it sort of was. Sam cleared his throat from behind them, and Cas let go, as if he hadn't been holding on in the first place.

  
***

  
It kept happening. Almost every hunt threw Dean and Cas at each other, often when they were panting and exhausted with their defenses down. Eventually, Sam took Dean aside for a heart to heart. "About Cas..." he started.

"What?" Dean interrupted. "Is there something about Cas?"

"You tell me, Dean." Oh, no, not the puppy dog eyes and the earnest expression. He was not a mark, dammit.

"There's nothing to talk about. Are we done talking about our feelings now?"

"So you do have feelings for Cas?" Dean made a face at him. "Look, you need to shit or get off the pot. You're giving him some serious mixed signals, and it's making him miserable."

"I'm giving him mixed signals? Cas is the one who's staring at me and touching me, and then leaving me behind like I'm yesterdays newspaper." Oh, shit, he had definitely not intended to say any of that. Sam smirked and dropped the subject.

  
***

  
During the next hunt, they split up. Sam stayed behind, searching the police and hospital databases for more victims with their eyeball fluid sucked out. (Yech.) Dean and Cas canvassed the neighborhood, looking for other signs of witchcraft or demons. They found the witch, a former beauty queen who was trying to win back her looks with magic, but she got the drop on them and knocked them out with a spell. Dean woke up bound to an altar and smeared with various bodily fluids, and Cas was shouting from where he was standing strapped to a pole. The last ingredient for the spell was apparently semen, and the witch was dragging Dean's jeans down to try and get some. As he lay there, half naked, trying his best to resist the woman's advances, Cas found the strength to escape from his bonds and shoot the witch in the head. He untied Dean. "Damn, you're hot when you go all badass for me." He hadn't intended to say it out loud, but now it was there, in the open between them.

"Let's get you cleaned up," Cas said. "There might be lingering effects from the spell."

After Cas had scoured the bathroom and not found anything out of the ordinary, they decided it was safe to use her shower. It had been ages since Dean enjoyed a shower as much as this one. He rinsed all the blood, mucus and various other fluids from his face and hair. "Dude, peach/kiwi or lavender, which girly shampoo should I use? I'm gonna smell like Sammy when I'm done."

Cas had stayed on the other side of the curtain, silently keeping watch until now. "It makes no difference to me. Your natural smell will overpower the perfume."

"Are you saying that I stink?"

Cas pulled the curtain back, angrily. "No, I'm saying that your natural scent is intoxicating." They stared at each other, both uncertain. Dean broke the impasse. He grabbed Cas' lapels with his wet hands and smashed their lips together in a kiss. Cas didn't kiss back at first, but when Dean pulled back, afraid that he had ruined their friendship, Cas surged ahead, licking at his lips and grabbing Dean's foamy hair.

***

  
"Finally," Sam said when they came back to the motel room hand in hand.

They kept hunting, the only difference that Sam booked his own room wherever they stayed. It was a comfortable routine, and Dean was happy that Cas had finally become a true Winchester, a part of this strange family. Whenever they were in certain progressive states, Sam would hint about "making an honest man out of Cas", but Dean ignored it. If they wanted a marriage certificate, they could damn well forge one, like they did with every other paper in their lives.

He knew it was too good to last, too good for the likes of him. He didn't deserve happiness like this. A wendigo caught Cas, and Dean was barely there in time to stop him from being eaten. The first victim, a young blond ranger, was hanging from the ceiling. Cas slowly bled out on the dirt floor of the ancient hunting cabin, while Dean held his hands and cried. "Cas... It wasn't supposed to be like this. This is all my fault. You should be an angel, not..."

"Don't be stupid, Dean. I fell because I had to fall." He gasped for breath. "But you're right. Not like this. I let my own pleasure blind me from the feeling that something was wrong." Dean's own wounds were bad enough that he didn't expect to walk out of here, but he wasn't ready to die, not yet.

Sam watched them both, tearing up.

"But hasn't it been a good and happy life, Dean?" the trapped ranger asked. "You never expected to live into middle age anyway. You've had your angel and your brother by your side for years, and now, you're going to die together with the angel. Heaven awaits, Dean. You don't have to do anything to get your reward."

"No! This is wrong! Take us away!"

"If you insist," Oberon said and clapped his hands. The hunting cabin dissolved, leaving only the stench of the wendigo.


	9. Honey, You Should See Me in a Crown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains frank discussions of the not entirely normal psychosexual development of the Winchester boys, and a slam against Wincest.

ORPHEUS  
The heart of the king loves everything  
Like the hammer loves the nail  
But the heart of a man is a simple one  
Small and soft, flesh and blood  
And all that it loves is a woman  
A woman is all that it loves  
And Hades is king of the scythe and the sword  
He covers the world in the color of rust  
He scrapes the sky and scars the earth  
And he comes down heavy and hard on us

\--Epic part two, from Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell

"This one should be easy," Oberon said. "I just want you to find my crown and Titania's." Sam looked around. They were in a huge vault, filled with heaps of treasure: gold, silver and jewels; coins, bars, precious stones and jewelry just lying there on the floor. When he looked back at Oberon, he was already gone.

"Son of a bitch." Sam started looking for anything that looked like a crown. He found several just in the pile below his feet. He picked them up and stared at them. How were they supposed to know which crown Oberon wanted them to find?

"These are made from twigs and leaves," Castiel said.

"Huh?" was Sam's brilliant reply.

"They're illusions. Fairy gold."

"So, I guess the crowns made from real gold are the ones we want. Can you see it, Cas?"

Cas squinted. He walked towards a heap and stared at it with his usual intensity. "Unfortunately, I need to be close to the objects to use my true sight."

Sam felt dejected and useless. His demon powers had never included a second sight, no matter how psychic he had been. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"You can bring me all the crowns you can find."

Sam looked around again. Damn, the vault was huge. They were going to need a system for this. "How about, you go left and go through the piles over there? Smooth them out when you're done, so we don't have to go through them again. I'll do the same to the right, and I'll bring you the crowns I find when I can't carry any more of them?"

"That is acceptable." They started the slow search for crowns. Castiel went through a heap the size of his outstretched arms in a few minutes, but Sam needed to rifle through the treasure by hand, and it all felt genuine. After what felt like an hour (but time passed strangely in Faerie), he brought an armful of crowns to Castiel. None of them were the real thing, and Cas hadn't found anything either.

There was lots of time to think while they worked. Sam usually preferred not to think about Dean and sex, but the current dilemma seemed to call for it. Nobody had ever claimed they had had a normal situation growing up, and unfortunately, that extended to their sexual development. Sam couldn't count the number of times he had walked in on Dean masturbating when they were teenagers. Sometimes, Dean had flaunted it, but that had stopped after Sam left for Stanford. (Part of growing up, he guessed. Or maybe Dean just felt so betrayed he couldn't trust Sam with nudity anymore.)

Sam, on the other hand, had always tried to be careful, not that it was easy when they always had been sharing a room. When he had woken up after his first wet dream, and tried to hide the soiled sheets, it had been Dean who had talked to him. Dean's version of The Talk had basically been "jerk off in the shower for easy cleanup, porn is great but not realistic, here's one of my old mags, talk to me again when you get a girlfriend." A few years later, when Sam had started to take an interest in girls, his questions had been on the "how do I talk to girls?" level, and Deans answers had been on the "this is a sure-fire way to give them orgasms" level. All in all, they didn't have normal sibling boundaries, and he wasn't all surprised that people mistook them for a couple. (Becky and her fellow incest sex fans were still creepy as fuck.)

So, if he had a point to his ramblings, he did not want to think about Dean's sexuality, but the situation with Cas kind of forced him to. He had never seen Dean with guys, but he was overcompensating like a patient case out of the Psych 101 textbook. And growing up with John Winchester and his paleolithic ideas of masculinity could fuck up a more stable person than Dean. Based on their experiences in Oberon's illusions so far, getting both the knuckleheads to admit that they did love (and did want to bang) each other was probably the key. Now he only needed to get Dean to overlook three decades of an aggressively heterosexual identity, and get Cas to get over his angel hangups. Easy peasy!

In the next batch of crowns, a discreet golden diadem with small golden roses and leaves turned out to be real, and Cas had found a golden tiara with blood red rubies. "Oberon, you fucker, come here!" Sam shouted, and the fairy king manifested between them, right in their personal space. Cas recoiled, and Sam couldn't help smiling at the dose of his own medicine.

"I see you found them. Good. I've missed my crown," Oberon said, and donned the tiara. His bells chimed, and Sam shuddered at the noise. "But you need to work faster. Your beloved Dean is all alone, without nourishment. Even here in Faerie, men won't survive exposure for very long." He clapped his hands over Sam's litany of curses.


	10. Lawyers, Guns and Money

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jess/Sam. Contains John Winchester's parenting and homophobia, and some slut shaming of Jess from OCs. Major character in the process of dying.

I hate with an edge of violence I can't sustain or commit, in brief storms of clenched teeth and graphic fantasies: battering the skulls of people I love, screaming into strangers' faces, shaking them, shaking them until they die.

I feel this over a rude remark, an empty coffee pot.

\-- Benjamin Clime, Animals.

Sam stared out at the sea of people in the audience. He didn't even try to find his own family in the crowd. Right now, he just wanted the ceremony to be over, so he could get his damned law school diploma and go get drunk with Dean to celebrate. (He had given himself the rest of the week off before starting to study for the Kansas bar.) At times like these, he hated his last name. Alphabetical order could suck it. Why not start with the tallest students and work their way back to the tiny people? The hot California sun baked him in his robes.

"Winchester, Sam," the dean said after half an eternity. Sam could hear the cheers of his mother and Jessica from the back rows. Loud women, a perennial Winchester favorite. He stepped up, accepted the diploma, shook the dean's hand and made his way to the other side of the stage. Great. It would all be over soon.

After the ceremony, he slowly made his way to his family, with frequent stops to slap his friends on the back, to shake everyone's hands, to get hugged. Like a small but determined quarterback, Jess tackled her way to him, and embraced him like there was no tomorrow. "I'm so proud of you, Sam. You made it!" Her words warmed him to his core, and then she kissed his breath away. Yes, he had been right to ask her to marry him. He couldn't imagine a better fiancée.

"I hate to be interrupting," John said.

"Let them have this," Mary said. "It's something worth celebrating." Sam slowly lets go of Jess, one last lingering look at her radiant face.

"Mom, Dad, I'm so glad you could be here."

"Son, I'm proud of you," John said, laying a hand on Sam's shoulder. "I may just be a mechanic, who didn't even make it through college on the GI bill, but you did it. You're going to be a hotshot lawyer, I just hope you'll remember your family when you're famous."

Sam laughed. "Don't be silly. Of course I will." He nudged Jess. "In fact, there's something I want to tell you. Where's Dean?"

Mary cleared her throat. "He'll be around." Oh. So Dean and Dad had argued, again. He just hoped his brother could get over his stubborn ass and come to celebrate with him. It must have shown on his face, because Mary continued, while touching his arm. "He will be, Sam."

Sam tried not to be disappointed, or at least, not to let it show. "Anyway, we're moving back to Kansas. I'm going to study for the Kansas bar instead of the California bar, and Jess already has teaching job lined up in Topeka." The look on his mother's face was worth every single hassle of interstate moving.

***

Later that night, as they were loading his and Jess' possessions into a rented van, Dean did show up. He was already halfway drunk. "My baby bro..." he said, trying to lay his arm around Sam's shoulder, and removing it when the angle got too uncomfortable. "My baby bro the lawyer."

"Dean, you're drunk." Sam laid his arm around Dean's shoulder instead, and he could feel his big brother lean into the touch.

"Yeah?" His shit eating grin got even wider. "D'ya know why I'm drunk?"

"Because you're a dick?"

"No. No no no... He's the dick," he pointed at John, who scowled back.

"No, you're the dick. Couldn't even show up for my graduation, and now you're drunk and picking a fight with Dad. As if that ever ends well." Dean and Dad had a Complicated, capital C, relationship. They were business partners, and when Dean was in the mood to be a "good son" he obeyed their former Marine father without hesitation. When they disagreed, sparks flew and the fallout was massive. Sam had chosen Stanford not just because it was a great college and he got a full ride, but also to get out from the family business and the family dynamics. And now he was moving back. He just hoped the thirty miles between Topeka and Lawrence would be enough distance between them to keep out of the fights. (And let's be honest, he hadn't been an uninterested party. He had had enough arguments with Dad himself. The old man just tended to provoke people. See also: Bill, Ellen and uncle Bobby.)

"Yeah? So, what does your college edumacated ass say about him being a total homophobe?"

"What?" Sam asked, not disbelieving Dean's statement, but wondering how it was relevant to their argument. John had always insisted his sons would grow up to be real men, which meant knowing their way around an engine, shooting small animals and innocent tin cans with military precision, and underage drinking of beer and heavy liquor. It also meant that "girl" was an insult, and that "gay" was completely unthinkable.

"Cas!" Dean shouted, and a timid man in a suit and trench coat came to stand by his side. "Heya Sammy, meet my boyfriend, Cas."

Sam held out his hand, and after a moment of hesitation, Cas shook it. "Hi, Cas. I'm Sam, Dean's brother. Sorry about the family drama."

"Hello, Sam," Cas said in a very deep voice. "I understand that revelations about one's sexual orientation can cause unrest in the family, even if I never understood why."

Sam couldn't help smiling at the man's ridiculous formality.

"Great," Dean said. "My geek boyfriend bonding with my geek brother."

"I thought you wanted me to like him," Sam said. John was still staring daggers at them, but Jess swooped in, like an angel, and diverted John's attention by asking him for help with carrying the bed down to the van.

***

"He'll come around, I'm sure of it," Sam said, after they had escaped the uncomfortable family situation to the closest bar.

"Or he won't," Dean said, deeply hurt. "And then what will I do?"

"Then you'll hold onto that boyfriend of yours and let your dumbass father go. You can't let him rule your life, Dean. If Cas is so important to you that you'll actually come out for him, you need him." It was more of a touchy-feely conversation than he was comfortable having with his brother, so he took a long sip of his beer and waited for Dean to talk.

"It wasn't how I wanted it to go." Sam nodded. "I mean, I knew he wouldn't be waving any Pride flags anytime soon, but I hadn't expected him to threaten to..." John had never been violent, but his temper was pretty bad. "I thought he'd come around. I thought he'd like Cas, because who wouldn't like Cas?" Dean said it with complete sincerity, and stroked Cas' hand under the table, probably thinking he was discreet. It was so cute to see the ever macho, love-'em-and-leave-'em Dean finally falling for someone, because from what Sam could tell, Cas was more odd than likable. Sam shot a smile at the strange man who had caught his brother's heart.

"You know that I've always known, right?" Sam asked.

"What?"

"You've been overcompensating, trying to be just like Dad and then some, but I've seen the way you look at Doctor Sexy. And he's not the only cute guy you've been ogling, you know." Dean choked on his beer. Score one for team Sam! "And I think Mom knows, too. She's never talked to you about kids, right?" Dean shook his head, still struggling with the beer in his airways. "Well, she's asking us repeatedly, both me and Jess. So I'm guessing she's counting on me to carry on the family name."

"Or she just know you'll have adorable kids. Jess is way out of your league, man." The joke was old, but still good. Sam huffed a laugh.

"So, how long have you two been together?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Two months," Dean said.

"A year," Cas said at the same time. "I don't understand Dean's definition of 'together'," Cas continued after a pause, and Sam laughed out loud. God, this guy was priceless.

"So, it took a while for him to get his head out of his ass, got it." Yeah, he was going to like his new prospective brother-in-law.

***

Sam and Jess moved into a three bedroom house with a tiny garden on the outskirts of Topeka after getting married in a simple backyard ceremony. Jess seemed to like her job as an teacher for children with learning disabilities, but she came home exhausted every night. Sam, on the other hand, studied for at least ten hours a day until the bar exam in July. He passed, and Jess told him she had never been worried about it. Affording the mortgage and the significant repairs that needed to be done was tricky on a teacher's salary, and Sam still worked as an unpaid intern at a criminal defense lawyer's office. They got by on their savings and the "little extras" that Mary slipped to them.

Dean and John didn't make up, and the tension when they went back to his childhood home was palpable. John had apparently tried to keep Dean and Cas from coming there, but Mary had put her foot down, and told him she'd rather throw her husband out than her son. John had, wisely, chosen not to test her patience. Dean still visited Mary, but he and John didn't talk. When Dean came to visit Sam and Jess one day, he was panicking because he needed to get away from John's auto shop, but he couldn't afford to strike out on his own. Sam came up with the brilliant idea that Dean and Cas should move in with them. "We have room for you, Dean, and you wouldn't have to live in that grotty little apartment of yours."

Dean studied him, serious for a moment. "Dude, I hope you know that I never was serious when I said I'd mooch on you when you became a lawyer?"

Sam snorted. "Dean, I work for free. Jess brings home the bacon. You and Cas will be contributing, believe me. And if you're feeling guilty, you can always do some of the repairs. I've heard you're handy with a hammer."

"How can someone as smart as you work for free?"

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

A few weeks later, his brother and brother outlaw (they were not inlaws, because Kansas didn't recognize gay marriage; they were outlaws, Dean said proudly) moved in. Dean had started his own shop, restoring classic cars, and he loved every minute of it. "I was born to do this," he told Sam with a happiness in his voice that Sam hadn't heard in years.

Cas was the one who had a decent and regular salary from his job as a tax accountant. It became a running joke among the four of them. Jess was pruning the primroses one hot August day in her favorite tiny Smurf tank top and cut-off jean shorts. Cas left to get groceries, and Jess shouted after him. "Don't forget the beer, sugar daddy!" Cas simply waved, used to the derogatory phrase, but Mrs Thibault from across the street glared at them. That interaction turned into the juiciest gossip Potwin had ever heard. Jess, who did look young and did like her cartoon characters, was a teenage drifter, who was drugged and taken in as a sex toy by the unscrupulous Winchesters and their rich co-pimp, according to the wagging tongues. There were different theories about the men. Some people knew Dean and Sam were brothers, but that didn't stop them from imagining an incestuous relationship. Others simply said that all three men were using Jess.

Sam was furious, but Jess took it all with a smile and her usual good cheer, until it got back to her workplace. When she had come home crying that one night, afraid she'd lose her job, Sam went around the neighborhood, knocking on every door and telling their story. He wasn't ashamed to say that he used his looming height to put the fear of God into the slanderers.

The next day, the four of them had a conversation with Jess' boss, who never had any plans to get rid of her newest teacher over some vague rumors. "I know you're not underage. I signed your employment contract. And you should know that most of our students live in unconventional family groups. I think we have four, maybe five, nuclear families among our students. This is their reality. An extended family living together isn't going to freak me out." She smiled at Dean and Cas. "And unlike certain other people, I have no problem with gay relationships."

Knowing that Jess was safe made life somewhat easier for Sam, but he still worried. Over money, over finding a real job, over the tension between Dean and John, over the continued talk among the neighbors. He sometimes caught Cas staring at him, trying to figure him out, but it was okay, because Cas stared at people. Sam liked him a lot, but damn, he was awkward in social situations.

***

Thanksgiving came around, and Mary insisted all of them should celebrate with her and John. That ended about as well as it would have in a Strindberg play. John and Dean had a shouting match over the turkey, and John screamed that he didn't much care if Dean was a faggot, but did he have to bring his retard boytoy home to the family? Dean left the table, crying, and Cas followed him outside.

Sam winced at the words, both because they were slurs and because they seemed to be chosen specifically to hurt Dean as much as possible. "Dad, Cas does not have an intellectual disability. You'd know that if you ever talked to him. He's just shy and awkward."

"Why do you care, he's not your boyfriend too, is he? Or do you take turns fucking him in that den of sin of yours?"

"John Winchester," Mary said with steel in her voice.

"You know what? I'm done trying to deal with you." Sam felt his anger rise, taking him over. "I'm done with your bigoted worldview. You don't want us here? Fine. Don't expect me to come crawling back to you, because I am done."

"You walk out that door, don't you ever come back."

Jess stood up and left with him. "I won't. Mom, I love you. Come visit us. Dad, I love you, too, you goddamned idiot. Let me know when you're finished having your tantrums and can love us back, because you don't get me without Dean. He's my brother." His brother, and the one who had always stood by him. So, this was it. This was how a family was torn apart, completely and irreversibly.

A year passed, their odd little family getting by. John's absence still a huge, gaping hole in their lives, an absence they never spoke about. Mary visited them a lot, and she and Jess became friends, not just inlaws. It shouldn't have surprised Sam that Jess got pregnant. They had talked about children and waffled a bit, going through a phase when they sometimes were and sometimes weren't using protection. The look on Jess' face when she told him, when she showed him the positive pregnancy test, it was something Sam would never forget. He'd remember that look on his dying bed, and he'd cherish it all the way there. Dean and Cas were ecstatic to become uncles, and everything seemed to be just fine.

***

That couldn't last, of course. Sam got a call from Lawrence Memorial Hospital, telling him his father was seriously injured after a car accident. He told Jess, who insisted on joining him, and Dean. Dean was reluctant, but Cas convinced him to go, and offered his own support. They all piled into Dean's showpiece, a '67 Impala he had restored from practically scrap. As they sat by John's hospital bed and listened to the beep of the ECG machine, Sam wondered if this was his fault. John had always been reckless, but Mary had told him it had gotten worse since the Thanksgiving blowout. He wondered if John was ever going to wake up. There was brain swelling from the impact, and they were giving him every available treatment other than surgery, but it still came down to "wait and see", Dr Sheehy had explained. (The doctor looked younger than Sam, with his putto face and his blond curls, but he was, apparently, a qualified neurosurgeon.)

Sam and Dean sat on either side of John's bed, hoping against hope that he'd wake up. He stirred slightly, and whispered a single word. "Sam."

"Hey, Dad," Sam said, trying to hold his tears back. "Fancy meeting you here."

John woke up properly, and his lips twitched in an attempt to smile. "Dean?"

"I'm here, Dad," Dean said from the other side of the bed. The brothers clutched their father's hands, careful not to jostle the intravenous catheters. It would probably be too much to ask for an apology, they both knew that, but at least they were not arguing.

"I hope Jess gets a girl. Girls are easier," John said.

"Tell that to Mary's parents." Mary had never reconciled with her parents after the elopement with John. John managed a small smile.

"Dean?" John asked again, before slipping into another deep sleep. The brothers left the room, desperate for some calm. Dean was crying and trying his best not to show it. Sam gave him a hug, and he felt his brother relax in his arms.

"He's such an asshole."

"He's trying," Sam said. And wasn't that the truth of their lives. John Winchester had been trying. Trying to be a decent father, trying not to give in to his alcoholism, trying to connect with his sons, who were both similar to him and completely different. "You know he's never going to apologize."

"I just wished he had come to me before he was on his death bed."

Cas came up behind Dean and laid a supporting hand on his shoulder.

Sam felt a growing sense of unease. Something was off about the situation. A small voice in the back of his head told him he and Dean should have been in that car, and that Dean should be lying in a hospital bed, too. "Hey, Dean..." He had no idea how to continue, how to explain his worries.

"It should have been me. I should have been in that car with him." How the hell do you say "exactly" to something that could be either an agreement with your own premonitions, or a stupid, self-sacrificing wish to give up one's own life in return for someone else's?

"We should both have been in that car with him." A vision flashed before him. A life without Mom, without Jess, without Dad. Cas, however, was still there, staring at them both (but mostly at Dean).

"I agree," Cas said quietly.

Dr Sheehy came to them, starting to talk about treatment options, but Sam couldn't hear a single thing he said. "This is wrong," Sam said.

"Good on you, Demeter," the doctor said, and Sam recognized him as Oberon. "I didn't think you would want to leave this world."

"I don't," Sam said. "This is my ideal life. I miss Jess and Dad every goddamn day. But I don't want to live in your illusion." Oberon rolled his eyes and the hospital corridor dissolved around them.


	11. Easy Livin'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains mental illness and existential angst.

This is a place I've never knew before  
It's called easy livin'  
This is a thing I've never seen before  
And I've been forgiven

Easy livin' and I've been forgiven  
Since you've taken your place in my heart

Somewhere along the lonely road  
Had tried to find you  
Day after day on the windy road  
Had walked behind you

\-- Easy Livin', by Uriah Heep

"C'mon, Cas," Dean shouted. Cas ran as fast as he could (and that was pretty fast, because Jimmy had been a runner, and Cas had taken very good care of the body he lived in on a permanent basis since he fell), but Dean always outran him. There was something about his pumping bowed legs and wildly swinging arms that made Cas want to run slower and just watch him. Letting go of the idle thoughts, he managed to catch up by the time Dean cornered the vampire. Cas brought the machete down on the vamp's neck, and its head fell to the ground. "I love it when you go badass on monsters."

"I know you do," Cas replied and grabbed Dean for a long and hungry kiss. "And I will let you express that appreciation once we've salted and burned the body."

"Ooh, dirty talk!" Cas smiled at his partner. "That and five bucks will get you dinner." They worked together, disposing the body, removing as much forensic evidence as possible, and cleaning their clothes. They were a well-oiled team. When they were done with the cleanup, they went back to the motel where Dean did indeed express his appreciation. Cas loved that part of their arrangement. Ever since falling, since the prayers of humans and the voices of his brethren had died from his mind, he used Dean's worship of his body to keep the loneliness at bay. They weren't much for talking, never had been. When his wings had been clipped, he went to the Winchesters for comfort, and Dean didn't say much, but his body spoke volumes.

***

They still hunted all over the country, but they had a base in Kansas. ("Smack in the middle," Dean had explained, and Cas had chosen not to press the issue.) Not much, just a small house with a garden. Cas dedicated all his free time to gardening, trying to come into contact with his absent Father through their shared interest. Whenever he planted a seed or trimmed a plant, he'd say a prayer to God and to Joshua. The bees were his pride and joy, the way they had evolved to care for flowers of all kinds, to pollinate, and to make honey for the next generation of bees. He felt guilty when he stole the honey, but he always left plenty of sugar for the larvae. He even had a few chickens, who lived well on the beetles and worms in their garden. In the fall, he'd make corn bread, tomato sauce with basil and garlic, roasted root vegetables and fruit salad with apples, pears, cherries and peaches, all from his own garden. If he served it with some kind of meat, Dean would gladly eat and even compliment his cooking. Sam stayed with them, but he had chosen to stop hunting, and instead researched from home. His library almost equaled Bobby's, and he could keep the garden going when Cas and Dean had to leave on hunting trips.

Cas rarely regretted falling. It was only when he thought about Bobby and the spinal injury the former angel hadn't been able to heal that he felt regret. He had known for a long time before it actually happened that he was about to fall. When he chose the brothers over the orders from Heaven, he was cut off, slowly and painfully. Since the day he turned up at Bobby's doorstep, just another human, Dean had taken such good care of him. He had wanted nothing else than to drown his sorrows in a liquor store, but Dean had steered him away, sat him down on the couch and kept him company. It didn't take them long to fall into bed together. (Or rather, into the backseat of the Impala.) Bobby had found out, and apparently, he had a longstanding rule of "not under my roof". It didn't help that Dean tried to re-negotiate with the argument that he was thirty now and not thirteen, so a while later, they drove off to find a place of their own. Cas knew, deep down, that the old man probably had just been tired of having his two grownup children more or less permanently living with him, because they were welcome back for short visits, and Bobby often complained that they weren't visiting enough.

Cas barely dared to think the words, but he felt forgiven. It was the best life he could imagine, an easy life compared to the other choices he had faced in the millennia of his previous existence. Of course, that meant that it couldn't last.

***

Dean leaned over and kissed him with a rarely seen ferocity. "Cas," he said between kisses, "I have to tell you something." Whatever it was that they had, they never spoke of it. Sam knew and acknowledged their relationship, but he was also bound by the apparent code of silence. Dean wanting to talk never boded well. "Cas... I..." Cas watched his lover, his partner, his family. "I've been feeling off lately. Down. There's just nothing that makes anything worth doing anymore. I feel empty."

Cas hugged Dean tightly and stroked his back. "There, there," he said, like he had heard so many humans try to comfort one another. Meaningless words, and they didn't bring Dean comfort at all.

"...and lately, I've been..." Dean's voice was almost inaudible. "I've been hearing stuff. Stuff that's not there."

"Oh," Cas said, not knowing what he could say. "We can get you help."

They did. Sam found a reputable psychiatrist, who prescribed antidepressants and initiated cognitive therapy. She clearly knew Dean wouldn't want to talk about his childhood memories. It seemed to help. Dean's outbursts of violent temper got more rare, and he seemed to be a little less down.

One morning, Dean showed up for breakfast fully dressed instead of in his usual terrycloth robe. Cas raised his eyebrows at him, but Dean just looked away and sat down. Sam served him a plate of pancakes. "So," Dean said, "I, uhm, I've been kind of a dick." Sam snorted. "Shut up and let me talk."

Cas sat down, and motioned for Sam to do likewise. "We're listening, Dean."

"Yeah, as I said, I've been a dick, which my therapist was kind enough to tell me. I, er, kind of can't decide if I'm going to cling too tight or push you away." He fiddled with his shirt. "God, I hate this shit. You know I'm no good at this feelings crap. Anyway," his speech sped up, "everybody leaves me and I'm scared you will, too." Cas reached out for him, but Dean held up his hand to stop him. "Not done yet, Cas. We've been through a lot of crap, and it's been my fault as well, but I want to know what you're not going to leave." He shrugged, looking bashful. "Apparently, it's necessary to move on in therapy."

Cas shook his head sadly. "I wish I could promise that."

"No, get this straight. I'm a realist. I know things will happen, especially in our line of work. But I want you to let me know, instead of just going off on your own, or trying to keep me out for my own protection. Think you can do that?"

"Of course," Sam said. "But then, my track record hasn't exactly been the best." He smiled apologetically. "I'm not going anywhere, Dean."

Dean slapped his back in thanks. "Cas?"

Cas looked up, pained. "I... I can't..."

"Yeah, you can," Sam said. "For Dean." He rose. "I'm going to leave you two to it."

"Hey, Cas, look at me. I'm not asking you to marry me, or anything."

"People around me tend to die."

"Hush, you idiot." Dean embraced him and held his head to his chest. "Just stay with me, because I want you to."

Cas never knew if Dean heard his whispered "yes".

***

Step by step, Dean got better. He was fully functional in society on the good days. He slept at night, and didn't wake up screaming from nightmares. He even told Cas that he loved him. But that wasn't it, Cas knew. Because the bad days still came regularly, the days when something about Dean's very soul was missing. There was something deeper, something existentially wrong about Dean, and modern psychiatry just wasn't equipped to handle that.

"Dude, if you were a chick, this would be about when we started trying to have kids," Dean joked during a particularly black streak. Cas preferred not to think that most humans brought new life into this world for so shallow reasons.

They tried getting to the source of his problems. In a spectacular failure, they attempted going to church. Dean ended up screaming at the priest over how God had abandoned his children, like his own father had done, while Cas tried to drag him away. They tried reading philosophy, but Dean just called it bullshit and slammed the book onto the table. (Cas secretly agreed with that, even if he didn't feel quite as strongly about it.) Sam suggested Star Trek, and it seemed to bring Dean a measure of comfort, but not actually get to the bottom of the problem.

A day in May, when the primroses were in bloom and only rosemary was missing from the Scarborough Fair love potion, Dean took a serious blow from a werewolf. Cas was there for him, trying to take care of his broken arm and his head injury, but it was a setback to Dean's mental recovery. He stopped eating, and wouldn't even let Cas feed him. He woke up during the early morning hours, and left the bed to stare out the window at nothing. Some days, he didn't get up at all. It could go several days between his showers. Dean's depression bled over into Cas' mood, and he found himself wondering if anything was real, even the things he could touch and smell. "This is wrong, Cas," Dean said one morning, his eyes sunken and his hair greasy.

Cas might not always be a practical thinker, but there was one thing he had learned about humanity, and it was that basic needs had to be met before you could confront existential angst. "Come on, Dean. You're having a bath." Dean looked at him as if it was a great non sequitur. "You might not feel better afterwards, but at least you won't feel worse." With a shrug, Dean got up. His steps were wobbly, and Cas wondered if he should have gone for food before cleanliness. He followed Dean to the bathroom, a set of clean clothes in hand. Cas ran the bath, careful to get the temperature warm but not too hot. "Do you want bubbles?"

"Do we even have bubble bath?"

"Apparently, we do. I think it's Sam's." The suggestion of Sam's girly habits drew a wan smile from Dean, and he didn't protest Cas' decision to use the bubbles. Dean got into the bath, plaster cast carefully held outside the tub. Cas studied his lover: the tiny soft belly almost gone; the arm muscles thinner than they had been a month ago, because Dean wasn't doing his physical therapy properly; the beard that had grown in just a few weeks' time; the calloused feet and hands. "It's my turn to worship you," he said, though he hadn't meant to say it out loud.

"I wish I could enjoy it," Dean said, gesturing at his crotch.

"Hush. This is not about sex." Cas drenched a sponge in soapy water, and started to clean Dean's body. He began with the feet, stinking of sweat but not particularly dirty. He was glad that Dean had never shown any tendencies towards being ticklish. Cas worked his way up the hairy legs, towards the thighs, carefully avoiding Dean's genitals. After soaping up Dean's lower body, Cas gently washed away the suds. He saw Dean lean back and close his eyes. "Don't fall asleep."

"'M not sleeping."

Cas kept washing. Dean's chest, his arms and armpits, his back and finally the shapely ass and flaccid cock. The skin under the cast was stinking, but there was nothing they could do about that without breaking the plaster. "How does it feel?"

"Better," was the short reply. "But not good," was implied.

"Come on, let's get you dressed and fed, and then, we'll see if there's anything in the garden I need to do."

They all shared a proper breakfast, for the first time in weeks. Cas could see that Sam was gathering courage to talk about something. He himself had kept rather quiet, and never dared to mention his own doubts, for fear of dragging Dean down further.

"Remember when we were working in that office?" Sam asked. "Remember what I told you, about thinking that we were in the wrong place, meant for something else?"

"Yeah, exactly!" Dean shouted, suddenly animated again. It broke Cas' heart to see him the way he used to be. "That was because it wasn't real!"

Something came over Cas, startling him. This was not their reality, either. "Oberon!"

The king of the fairies manifested before them. "You're getting better at this," he said. "This is the first time you've known it was me." Once again, he snapped his fingers and the world dissolved.


	12. All My Love

The cup is raised, the toast is made yet again  
One voice is clear above the din  
Proud Arianne one word, my will to sustain  
For me, the cloth once more to spin

\--All My Love, by Led Zeppelin

Oberon, still wearing his crown, showed them a gate leading into to a cavern. "You will find your Dean at the center of the maze, and when you bring him back out, we can talk about passage back." He disappeared, and appeared again just a short moment later. "Oh, and beware the minotaur."

Sam sighed. "Ca..." A hand over his mouth shut him down. He nodded. "Orpheus, can you teleport?"

"It's not technically teleportation."

"Any other day, I'd have been happy to know more, but I take it as a no. Can you see through the maze?"

"I'm sorry, Demeter."

"OK, then. We'll do it the hard way. Follow me." They ducked into the cavern, and saw three tunnels branching out ahead. Sam realized they were too low for him to stand up straight. He tied one end of the golden thread to one of the gate posts. "Do you have anything we can use to mark the paths we've taken?"

Castiel brought out his angel blade. "We can use this, and inscribe Enochian sigils. That should keep the fairies from tampering with the evidence."

"Good thinking. Now, we mark each path we take. In each crossing, we take the path with least markings, or a random direction if none are marked, and we turn back when we get to dead ends. Follow my lead."

They walked slowly, keeping the golden thread as a life line and making sure to mark their way. Sam's shoulder and back ached, and he was parched from the exertions of the day. At least he wasn't wounded, he thought with bitterness. Cas followed him, shoulders slumping and looking nothing like the angel he knew. "Hey, I was wondering..." Cas raised an eyebrow, and Sam decided that some conversations are easier to have if you're not looking at the person you're talking to. He changed tacks. "I liked the last illusion, even though it wasn't my own. Was it yours or Dean's?"

"I think it was mine," Cas said from behind him.

"A garden, a house, and you living with us. It was nice."

"It was." Dammit, Cas just wasn't going to give him any help here, was he?

"Dean seemed to like it pretty well. Especially the parts when I had to switch rooms so I wouldn't have to hear you." He turned, looking deliberately straight at Cas, who was fidgeting with his neck. "But it's just agape you feel for him, huh? You sure there was no eros or philia in there?"

"Demeter..." The tone was warning, commanding. Sam decided to push it.

"Look, I get that you have a massive crush on Dean, and I'm not objecting. In fact, I'm not even giving you the shovel talk."

"I don't see what tools have to do with this conversation." Oh, the places he could go with that line. He chose to play it straight (unlike certain other people in his immediate vicinity).

"It means that I won't threaten you if you hurt him." Cas tilted his head before turning to inscribe Enochian into the walls after their left turn. "It's a family thing. You get together with someone, their loved ones threaten to kill you and bury your body where nobody could ever find it."

"There's nothing you can do to hurt me," Cas said with certainty.

"Don't underestimate me. But my point was that I'm not giving you that talk. I want the two of you to get a grip on your emotions." In the distance, they could hear a deep, rumbling roar.

"Maybe we should do this in silence," Cas whispered. Sam gave him thumbs up.

At last, they found Dean. He was lying on the stone floor, naked, dehydrated, and exhausted, but he still grinned when he saw them. His cocky attitude was breaking Sam's heart.

"Heya, S..."

"No names," Sam interrupted quickly. "I'm Demeter, and this is Orpheus." Dean's eyebrows shot up. Sam stared back at him.

"What? I read," Dean said. "I know my mythology. It's self-preservation, really."

"We've got to get you out of here. We've even got an Ariadne thread."

"Am I the monster or the girl?" Dean joked, as Cas and Sam dragged him along. It should be embarrassing to see your grown-ass brother in the nude, but Sam was mostly worried about the ribs that had started to show.

"How long were you in there?"

"No idea. I'm starving. I'd kill for a burger, and I mean that literally. I was tempted to go Hannibal on your ass, but you eat too many veggies to be good meat." Sam snorted. "It felt like ages," Dean continued, seriously. "On and off, I had the weirdest dreams, though. Oberon is a dick."

"No argument from me," Sam said, and they hobbled along the thin golden line towards the exit.


	13. 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy

HADES  
The devil take this Orpheus  
And his belladonna kiss  
Beautiful and poisonous  
Lovely! Deadly!  
Now it thickens on my tongue  
Now it quickens in my lung  
Now I'm stricken! Now I'm stung!  
It's done already!  
Dangerous this jack of hearts  
With his kiss the riot starts  
All my children came here poor  
Clamoring for bed and board  
Now what do they clamor for?  
Freedom! Freedom!

\--His Kiss, The Riot, from Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell

"Not bad," Oberon said, when he met them outside the gate. "You have completed ten tasks. I think I will let you go." Cas raised his eyebrow. "Oh, come on, Orpheus, why don't you trust me?" Sam crossed his arms. "Yes, I intend to let you do two more, but I'm going to make you do them on your way out. The first one is traditional."

"Walk out of the underworld without looking back?" Cas asked.

"Exactly. And you will find the last one easy to complete once you're back in your own world."

"Dude! Where the hell are my clothes?" Dean asked. Oberon grinned at him, and Dean tried to push him up against the outer walls of the cave. He didn't get far before his legs gave out. Oberon threw his head back and laughed, and Dean was dressed again in his usual three layers, but still barefoot. The king clapped his hands, and they were back in the throne room. Behind Oberon's back, Cas gave Dean the third coin, and whispered something in his ear. Dean quickly palmed it and put it in the pocket of his jeans.

"Anything else?" Sam asked sarcastically, but Oberon just waved them off, as if he'd already lost all interest in them. They turned toward the narrow tunnel back to their own world, and started walking.

***

"Dean, it's important that you don't look back, no matter what you hear or see. The coin is your tie to the mundane world, so please don't lose it."

"Shouldn't be hard, right?"

Sam groaned. "You really shouldn't have said that, Dean."

They walked, Cas first, Dean after him, and Sam in the rear. All the way, Sam could hear voices pleading. Jess begged him to look back, to stay, told him she loved him and wanted to be with him forever. Their mother shouted after them, as if they were kids who were out playing.

"Dean," Cas said. "You mustn't." Yeah, Dean had been tempted, anyone could tell that, but Castiel's commanding voice made him stand up straighter and look ahead. "Look at me instead. Follow my lead. I'm telling you that you must keep walking, you must look forward at all times, or we will lose you." From what Uriel had said, Sam had inferred that Cas had been pretty high up in the angel army, and with a voice like that, Sam understood the need to obey him.

"Thanks, Cas," Dean said, with a surprising meekness in his voice.

John's calm, but annoyed voice let them know he was disappointed, that they should have known better, and he ordered them to stop and turn around, to go back and fight Oberon. Mary called again, screaming in pain, telling them they could stop it all if they just went back. Sam could smell the burning flesh, just like when Jess had died. It hurt. It hurt so bad. He stopped, head held in his hands, and tried his best not to give in. Dean and Cas must have heard him, because they also stopped. "Don't look back," he groaned.

"Sammy," Dean pleaded. "Sammy, don't do this."

"I'll try. But I need help." He raised his head. "Titania!" he shouted.

"Hello, my pretty," Titania said, as she appeared before him, again dressed in white. Suddenly, the voices were dimmer and less familiar, but what they said remained the same. Some promised love and acceptance, and others reminded all three of them that they were failures. "Is this the brother you care so much for?"

"Yes, Titania." She walked past Sam and Dean, and turned to study Dean with an eerie smile.

"What a beautiful creature you are," she said, holding Dean's chin in her hands. "I can see why Oberon was worried. He's such a jealous, petty little tyrant." From what Sam could see, she was stroking Dean's cheek bones. Cas was standing very still ahead of her. "But you're not his, and not mine to claim, either, I see. A shame. I would have liked another kiss."

"You can have another from me," Sam said. "Just help us get out."

"Same treaty?" Sam agreed, and Titania showed her sharp teeth in something that probably was supposed to be a smile. She stalked up towards him, and attacked his mouth with lips, teeth and tongue. For some reason, Sam didn't even have to bend down. He just held on to her hips and kissed back as much as he could while her hands roamed over his back. She bit down on his lower lip, and drew blood. "I will remember you, Demeter," she said. Sam shuddered, hearing the intent in her words. "I will remember you and the love you have for your brother. I will remember your blood, because I have tasted it." Her demeanor changed to flippant. "You were almost there. Just a few more steps until you get back out." She disappeared, and Sam could see the opening to their own world ahead. It couldn't have been there earlier, could it?

"Dude, what is it with you and non-human chicks?" Sam made a disapproving face, not that Dean could see it. He probably knew, though, because he laughed as he followed Cas out. Sam muttered darkly about geese and ganders.

***

As they broke through to the field, Dean fell into a deep sleep. Castiel took one look at Dean and muttered something in Enochian to make himself angelic again. He touched his fingers to both brothers' foreheads, and they all teleported back to the motel room. They manhandled Dean onto his bed.

"I guess that the last task is to get Dean awake again."

"That seems to be a reasonable guess."

"I think I may know how," Sam said. "At least, it can't hurt to try. Given the fairy tale tasks we've been doing, he probably needs true love's kiss."

Cas looked at him with alarm. "How are we going to arrange that? True love has to be reciprocated, and I haven't seen Dean give his heart to anyone."

"Idiot," Sam said. Something about the two of them brought out his inner Bobby. "It's you. It's always been you. Can't you see that, after everything we did down there? After everything you two have sacrificed for each other up here?" Cas looked at him, stunned but hopeful. "Go on, kiss the guy." He couldn't believe he was setting his brother up with an angel in a male vessel, but it all made sense to him now.

Cas leaned down, slowly, and pressed a soft kiss to Dean's lips. Dean awoke with a start and stared at Cas. The angel withdrew, but didn't get very far before Dean dragged him back down into a much filthier kiss.

"Uhm..." They didn't seem to hear him, or notice him in any way at all. There was ass groping, and hands straying underneath ruffled clothing. "I'm just going to go... Don't wait up." They didn't even break the kiss. Yeah. A long drive, a nice meal, and then a room on his own. One that did not share a wall with this one. He left with a grin on his face.


End file.
